Realising One's Potential
by fringeperson
Summary: Rogue was said to have the potential for limitless power, not that anyone ever told her that. Of course, not being told has never stopped Rogue from finding things out. Don't own, will include death of some characters from the series, complete.
1. Chapter 1

Anna Marie – no, there _was_ no other name – sat in a beige office with a lawyer and a social worker. She was fifteen, and her guardian, Irene, had recently died. The official findings of the coroner were 'heart attack', but _she_ knew better. _She_ had been the one to kill the woman after all, accidental though it was, and educational as it may have been. Damn but she was having issues now. She'd _loved_ the blind woman who'd taken such care of her, and to find out that she was being raised and _groomed_ to help some blue shape-shifter woman and magnetic man take over the world? She was not _one bit_ pleased about that. So now here she was, with the lawyer to see to the final disposition of her late-guardian's properties, and the social worker was there about _her_ disposition.

"Ah know Ah'm young, but Ah'd be strahkin' out on mah own in a couple years anyway," she said. "Ah'd like to keep the house and live on mah own," Anna Marie explained to both the adults present.

"Shouldn't be a problem with you keeping the house Miss Marie," the lawyer said. "Irene had no other family, and had made no arrangements otherwise in the event of her death."

The social worker was less sure, but eventually agreed. "On the condition that you get checked up on once every fortnight until you're seventeen."

Anna Marie smiled and nodded. Then it was just funeral plans and explaining about all the paperwork that would come with her living on her own. A lot of it she knew already, thanks to having absorbed all of Irene's memories when she accidentally killed the woman. A fair amount of that knowledge was also gonna come in handy when it came to getting used to her new mutant powers.

Yeah, mutant, who knew? A lot of people apparently. According to Irene's memories and the visions Anna Marie had been getting since absorbing Irene's powers as well as her memories, there were _groups_ of mutants out there. Anti-human groups, pro-human groups, anti-violence groups and pro-violence groups. Groups that were pro-mutant and wanted to just avoid people because they figured they'd just be hated for being different, and lots of these groups around the world. It was nuts, really. And then there was her, little Anna Marie, with the potential to be the most powerful mutant ever, and there was at least _one_ of these groups that knew about her already.

An anti-human, pro-mutant, pro-violence group. Thing was, as far as Anna Marie could tell, all the groups that Irene had heard about and had visions of – and that _she_ was now having visions of – all had their hearts and ideals in more-or-less the right place, but for a lot of them, their methods were shot to hell.

And wouldn't ya know, but _all_ of them had nick-names for the people in them. Irene's had been Destiny, because she'd had visions of the future. Creative much?

Well, first things first, from now until one of those groups showed up – and she had a feeling that wouldn't be long coming – a girl living on her own needed to know how to defend herself. She _could_ just lay her bare hand on the skin of whoever might be trying to nab her, but then she'd be stuck with that person in her head with her and Irene, and frankly, she didn't necessarily _want_ that. A steel baseball bat was purchased, and she signed herself up for karate lessons. Okay, so it was a contact sport, but she could wear gloves and long sleeves and she'd be mostly fine. If she got a little skin contact, then she'd just learn faster.

The trick would be learning how to take memories and strength and powers at will, rather than all the time, and to not hurt the person she was taking them from unless she wanted to... if that was even possible. Well, the meditation exercises she got from a book at the school library helped sorting out herself from Irene and integrating everything properly without having to keep being confused about who she was exactly.

The stuff she got from touching people didn't go away after all. It got integrated, it got processed, some things faded, but everything did, in the end, stay with her. Just at different levels of potency depending on how much she'd absorbed and then how dedicated she was to using whatever it was she'd collected from the other person.

It was a month before someone other than her social worker or someone from school knocked on her door. She'd been meditating in her living room, the bay window wide open to be able to hear the river and the sounds of the bayou wildlife, and was currently sorting through the memories – simple as they were – of a bird she'd gotten close enough to pet earlier that day. So much for the idea of animal companionship, and so much for being able to turn it on and off at will. All the same, she got up from where she'd been sitting on the floor and didn't bother to pick up her gloves on the way to the door.

"Can Ah help you?" she asked as she stood in the half-open doorway, leaning on the frame while holding onto the door handle in case she felt the burning desire to shut it in the face of whoever it was.

"Heard about a mutant in the area," said the man in a black-and-orange uniform who was standing on her door step.

"Didja now?" Anna Marie countered curiously, raising a hand to pat the man's cheek. "Ah think you got the wrong state, friend. The comic convention happens in New York."

The man's image flickered, and was soon replaced by a blue woman with red hair. Anna Marie wrapped that red hair around her fist and dragged the woman inside. She knew this woman from Irene's memories. This woman had adopted her when she was four and thought that made her a mother.

Anna Marie held this woman down until she couldn't feel a pulse in the woman's wrist, then grabbed a thin cloth and started CPR. Like hell she needed another heart attack linked to her name. Once Mystique – the blue woman – was breathing on her own again, Anna Marie cracked her skull with the baseball bat and dragged her out to the river. She wasn't really a violent girl, but she knew, _knew_, this was the most likely way of getting it through to this woman to stay the hell out of her life.

Though, that school that had other mutant kids in it sounded like it might be cool. Hanging out with other kids as freaky as her might not be too bad. Of course, that depended on the other kids that were already there a whole lot, and she'd never really been a social butterfly.

On top of that, she now had another whole person – memories, powers, strengths, the lot – to sort through in her meditation.

~oOo~

A year later, and a lot had happened to Anna Marie. For one thing, she'd changed her name. Legally. Her name, full and in total, was Rogue. She liked it better than Anna Marie, and it didn't say anything about her powers or a bad take on her real name, so it wasn't putting her in the same sub-level of creative as the sorts who called themselves Destiny, Mystique, Magneto, Sabertooth, Juggernaut, or Professor X – though, granted, only the last one was a slant on his _real_ name, and was more like an abbreviation than anything else. Oh yes, she's learned a _lot_ from the memories she'd taken from Mystique.

Heck, she'd learned a lot from the coma patients at the hospital where she volunteered on Saturdays, and even more from the old folks at the home where she volunteered on Sundays. Especially from the ones who'd decided to burn through their kids' inheritance before going. It meant she knew how to do all sorts of things you'd never think a Mississippi girl would know how to do, and she made sure she kept up her meditation, so she never had to worry about having extra personalities to deal with, even though she kept all the memories and experiences.

One old lady had toured the world in her youth, and Rogue had gotten five different languages from her, as well as an appreciation for different sorts of food. Another old woman knew everything there was to know about gardening. A slightly scarred old guy knew how to catch catfish with his bare hands. One coma patient knew how to drive snow-mobiles and jet-skis – he woke up a week after Rogue touched him, which was quite the change from her usual experience. She guessed the pain and the pull of her powers on his life experiences was enough to pull him out of it while at the same time exhausting him enough to sleep for another week. Another coma patient, a guy in his late thirties who'd been 'asleep' for about five years, also woke up a week after she touched him. From him, she got all sorts of crazy moves, as well as a lot of natural-healing-type know-how, since the guy had trained with fighting monks in Tibet for about fifteen years of his life before a mild stroke and sent him here while he was visiting family. It was actually really nice, getting to see the families of the coma patients go all glassy-eyed and choked up with joy, seeing whoever it was wake up at last.

Right now though, Rogue was at the school dance, well covered and not actually mingling so much as just enjoying the night air and the sound of music from inside the building while she watched the water run by underneath the extended porch that was part of the hall the school had rented for the occasion. Then she heard the heavy footsteps of someone who had just been pushed forwards.

"Can Ah help you?" she asked, turning around, fully prepared for it to be a bad joke at her expense, a dare between two jocks to trick the aloof, pale girl with the odd hair into making a fool of herself.

The one behind gave his friend a thumbs-up, and the blonde in front of her stuttered.

"Uh... Dance! Would you like to? With me that is... together?" he asked, and it was clear from the way he stuttered it out, the gestures of his friend behind him, and the total _lack _of smooth involved that it was no joke.

All the same... "Ah'm really just hangin' out here," she said, not wanting to go into the crowded room that was an accident waiting to happen.

But the jock was kinda cute, and he looked like a kicked puppy when he figured out – remarkably quickly for a jock – that she was turning him down.

"Aw heck, why not?" she allowed, a smile touching her face. She _was_ still a teen-aged girl after all, she had wants and needs of her own. A little affection was kinda high on that list, her mutation aside.

Plus, the way the jock lit up like Christmas had come early was even cuter than his kicked-puppy look.

"What harm can come from just one dance?" she suggested. "Ah'm not fond of crowds though, so could we dance out here instead?"

The jock nodded vigorously, and his friend clapped him on the shoulder before heading back inside.

"I'm Cody," the jock introduced himself, grinning as they started dancing to the music they could hear coming through the open door.

"Mah name's Rogue," she answered.

They talked a bit more while they danced, but didn't swap phone numbers at the end of the night. It was an evening that left Rogue feeling good about herself as a girl in general. She'd attracted an upright, stand-up, down-to-earth nice-guy. She knew because she'd scraped a little bit of her skin against his, very briefly, while they'd been dancing. Not enough to have to deal with having large amounts of Cody in her head, or to give him more than something that felt like the jolt of static electricity passing between two people, but still enough to get memories and experiences from the cute quarter back. It was flattering to know he'd been staring at her all week.

Still, she declined his request for a date. She'd delved into Irene's power for a moment, wanting to know if it would be a good idea to go out with a guy she couldn't really touch, only to get a vision of people waiting for her to come home so that they could talk to her.

"Ah'm real sorry Cody," she said. "But Ah applied to a school up in New York state recently, get out an' see the world a bit, ya know? Ah probably won't still be in Coldecott by the end of the week. If Ah weren't goin', you can be sure Ah'd say yes though."

Cody's shoulders slumped, but he nodded gratefully and smiled sadly.

"You'll look me up if you ever come back down?" he asked. "I think you'd be a great friend to have, even if..."

Rogue smiled. "Huh," she chuckled to herself, genuinely flattered. "Sure Ah will Cody."

The boy relaxed, his smile a little wider and he nodded again before taking her gloved hand and kissing her leather-covered knuckles lightly, then waved and walked back into the hall where the rest of their school year were dancing.

When she got home, there was a whole crew outside her front door, one of them the man who Mystique had impersonated a year ago. She was fairly sure it _wasn't_ Mystique again though, as it was quite the company.

"Y'all had better come inside," she said, shaking her head tiredly as she walked through them to her front door.

The house was pretty bare actually, especially given that it was occupied solely by a teen aged girl, but Rogue had sold a lot of Irene's nick-knacks and any furniture that she didn't use regularly fairly quickly. The emptiness of the house helped with the clarity she sought in her mind.

"Um, nice place you've got here," offered the red-head once she was inside.

"Kinda bare though," added the slightly younger brunette.

"_Kitty_," hissed the two older teens.

"What?" the brunette, Kitty apparently, asked.

"Yeah, don't scold the girl f'r speakin' her mind," Rogue put in as she turned in her living room to face her visitors. "So, y'all want somethin' ta drink?"

"That's right decent of ya to offer," the large man – who Rogue knew to be called 'Wolverine' thanks to Mystique's memories – said with a slightly crooked smile.

"Take the mask off inside sugar," Rogue said, tapping his chin very lightly with the bare tip of her finger, having taken her gloves off once she was inside. That amount of contact really only drew out the man's knowledge of what people would like to drink, since that's what he'd been thinking about. Surface thoughts only for that one, and not at all difficult to sort and categorise within her own head.

"Make yerselves comfortable," she offered, then ducked into the kitchen, not bothering to watch Wolverine shake off the 'static shock' feeling he'd gotten from her tiny tap.

According to Wolverine, it would be water for 'boy scout' and 'red', hot chocolate for 'half-pint' and 'elf', tea, water or a glass of wine (whichever they were offered) for 'Chuck' and 'Storm', and he'd like a beer but wasn't expecting one.

Once Rogue had put the milk on to heat, she grabbed glasses out of the cupboard and pulled a couple of bottles out of the hard-to-reach part of the corner cupboard. It was where she hid Irene's wine from the social worker. Rogue didn't drink it, but she did use it in cooking. A waste of fine wine maybe, but it sure made her gumbo great. For herself, and the man she'd gotten the drink preferences from, Rogue pulled a couple of root-beers out of her fridge. It wasn't _real_ beer, but it was as close as she was able to offer him.

When the hot chocolates were made, Rogue loaded everything up onto a tray and took it into the lounge room, where she set the tray down and started passing the drinks around.

"Y'all are gonna have to talk to mah social worker about me movin' to a different state," she informed them as she handed a glass of wine to 'Chuck' where he sat in his wheelchair, brushing her hand against his to get a better idea of him.

"Oh my!" the bald man exclaimed at the skin-to-skin contact, and would have dropped the glass if Rogue hadn't still been holding onto it as well.

"Tingles, doesn't it?" she commented with a wry smile.

"What tingles?" asked 'boy scout', worry for 'Chuck' in his voice.

"Mah power," Rogue answered. "It's touch-based," she explained, handing over the glass of wine more carefully this time before moving over to 'boy scout' – who 'Chuck' called Scott, so that was more likely his name. Chuck himself was actually Charles Xavier, which agreed with Mystique's memories.

"Ah absorb memories, experiences, energy, strength, _mutant powers_ through touch," she explained, and lay her hand over Scott's cheek. "It starts off as a tinglin' feelin', like a static shock, but the longer Ah hold on, the more powerful that 'tingle' gets, and the more of your memories Ah copy."

She took her hand away when she felt the power building up behind her eyes. Scott's power.

"For that much, you'll be tired a while, but you should be fine to go to school tomorrow," Rogue explained, aware of the red glow that was currently coalesced around her eyes.

"How... How are you not just...?" Scott asked, confused.

"Ah may not have much control over turning mah _own_ power on an off," Rogue said, easily figuring out the boy's question. "But it's up to me if Ah use the powers Ah absorb from other mutants."

"So you've got my powers and Chuck's now?" Wolverine asked.

Rogue shook her head. "Ah got surface thoughts from the light contact," she answered. "Give ya a jolt and let me know what yer thinkin' at that moment. It needs to be a bit longer contact to get yer powers."

"That is completely awesome!" exclaimed Kurt – she'd gotten his real name and his alias 'Nightcrawler' from Scott and Chuck both. "Do me next! Teleporting can only be useful, ja?"

"Sure," Rogue agreed with a laugh, and lay her hand on Kurt's cheek. A short while later, Rogue disappeared from in front of Kurt with a _bamph_ and reappeared back where she'd left the drinks.

She shook her head sharply and sat down quickly. Rogue swiped her root-beer and took a slug before closing her eyes and sorting the Charles Xavier memories from the Scott memories from the Kurt memories from _her_ memories.

"Rogue?" Chuck – she knew his real name, but she liked Logan's name for the man. She'd gotten _his_ real name from him, Scott, and Kurt, but only just realised while sorting through.

"Ah'll come with ya," she said, not opening her eyes. "But like Ah said, you need to talk to mah social worker, the school Ah'm currently attending needs to be notified as well, an' this house _is_ mine, as well as all the stuff in it, so that needs sorting out."

"Of course," Chuck said, and Rogue could _hear_ the smile.

~oOo~

Once in Bayville, Rogue realised _very_ quickly that she would no longer have time to volunteer at old peoples homes or in coma wards. The homework from school and danger-room sessions at the mansion were going to be really packed on. On top of that, there was fixing her X-men uniform before she was going to be told to wear it.

"What's wrong with it?" Jean asked, confused as she watched Rogue pulling off a good amount of the colour that went down the body of the uniform.

Rogue raised an eyebrow at the girl. "Ya _do_ know yours makes yer butt look twice as big, don't ya?" she countered. "That bright green does ya no favours either. Kitty's isn't as bad because she's jus' smaller in general, but no way am _Ah_ gonna wear a large bit of bright colour down me."

Jean's cheeks flared almost as red as her hair before she turned and left Rogue to move all the colour onto a bib that stopped just below her boobs. Also, like hell she was gonna wear _yellow_ gloves. Belt, okay, shoulder pads, okay, but she was gonna wear _real_ boots with her outfit. She hadn't let 'pep' kill _her_ braincells after all.

"What did you say to upset Jean?" Ororo asked when she came in a few minutes later, her tone more amused than accusatory. "She was incoherent with impotent fury."

"Ah may have pointed out her uniform wasn't exactly flatterin' to her figure," Rogue answered with an unrepentant smirk. "Hey, Miss Munroe, can Ah ask you somethin'?"

"Of course," the darkly-skinned woman answered, sitting down on the bed beside the girl who had a great deal less white in her hair.

"What's it like? To feel the weather all the time?" Rogue asked, cocking her head curiously.

Ororo smiled indulgently, and there was just a hint of proud respect glinting in her eyes. "You know Rogue, you're one of the few people I've met who realised, right off, that it _is_ all the time," the older woman pointed out.

Rogue shrugged. "Even when the weather's fine, it's still weather. Ooh," Rogue cut herself off with a wince. "Bet that was tough when it first surfaced, huh?"

Ororo chuckled, but it was a tired chuckle, and she nodded her head. "It was," she agreed, "and I was in Tanzania at the time, so when I got control – and I got control quickly out of necessity – I was revered as a goddess."

Rogue smiled, pulled her feet up on the bed, wrapped her arms around her legs, and rested her chin in the dip between her knees. "Bet that felt good."

"At first, certainly," Storm agreed. "But I was under a lot of pressure from a lot of people, and I wanted something else for myself."

Rogue nodded. "Ah think Ah get where yer comin' from. One o' the old folks Ah minded when Ah was a volunteer back home, she said somethin' like... Now how did it go? Oh yeah!" Rogue snapped her fingers as the memory surfaced. It was actually something the woman had told her, something that had been told to _her_ by her father. Rogue put on an old-woman voice, using Mystique's power to make it resemble the old woman from her memories as much as possible. "Ah hear people all the time sayin' that with great power comes great responsibility, an' they're always meanin' that responsibility to be for the better of the people around yeh, but it's important to remember that yeh've got a responsibility to _yerself first_, or yer no good to anyone."

Ororo laughed at Rogue's old-lady-impersonation, but nodded all the same and patted Rogue on the shoulder. "Exactly," she agreed, then she felt the tingle.

Ororo hadn't remembered, for that brief moment, that Rogue's power reared up at skin contact, hadn't been bothered that the girl was wearing an off-the-shoulder shirt, and that she herself wasn't wearing gloves – as she only really did that when in uniform. For some reason though, she couldn't seem to pull her hand free, and the tingling was beginning to become painful.

Distantly, she heard Rogue gasp, and felt a pair of hands pry her fingers off the slim shoulder and lift her hand away from the pale flesh that was such a contrast to her own.

"Damn it,"Rogue said quietly. "Ah didn't even _think_ until Ah started to feel the air currents. We're both gonna have such _headaches_. C'mon Miss Munroe, _breathe_."

It was a good five minutes before Ororo had recovered enough to talk.

"How long do you predict the headache lasting?" she asked.

Rogue laughed weakly. "The rest of the day at least," she said. "Unless headache pills will work. Ah know they won't fer me, but they might f'r you. Eatin' will help too, if ya can stomach anything."

"To the kitchen then," Ororo said, bravely.

Rogue chuckled. "Lay down," she instructed kindly. "Just for a bit, let me get a shirt with shoulders to it, an' then Ah'll help you get down there. Yah migh feel a bit woozy for a short while."

Ororo nodded, then raised a hand to her head as she regretted the action, and lay down on Rogue's bed until the girl came back, more fully covered, to help her down to the kitchen.


	2. Chapter 2

She'd been assigned to work with the Boy Scout – yeah, Logan's nickname for Scott stuck in her head, though she rarely called him that to his face – and they'd been practising the reading they had been assigned for their drama exercise. They'd be performing it the following Tuesday. Rogue would be Kate, daughter of the French king. A role particularly suited, after a fashion, to the Mississippi girl who grew up not _quite_ far enough from the Cajuns to be inclined to be without at least _some_ knowledge of the language. And then there was that old lady she'd absorbed even better understanding of not only _proper_ French, but a few _more_ languages from as well.

The passage in question involved French dialogue. It also involved a third person, so she really had no idea what the teacher was doing assigning it to only two people. It was amusing to her though, that it was perceived as a love scene. Anybody who spoke French would know that Kate did not look forward to the day her arranged marriage would be fulfilled.

Practice was interrupted by Kurt popping in.

"Woah, tender moment here?" he asked. "Sorry to interrupt."

Rogue couldn't help it. She'd been repressing it and holding it in since she got her first look at the lines. She burst out into gut-busting laughter. "Good one little bro," she said when she got her breath back, patting him on the shoulder and trying to stem the tide and prevent any further laughter from bursting forth.

"Uh, Rogue?" Kurt ventured. "Flattered as I am zat you see me as family, there _is_ a reason for my being here, _other_ than watching you both rehearse."

"Yer playin' message carrier?" Rogue asked, surprised out of her laughter as she blinked up at the blue boy currently crouched on the table.

"Ja. Jean's been nabbed -"

"What!" Scott interrupted, grabbing Kurt's uniform.

"Easy on the exquisite costume mein friend!" Kurt objected. "Wolverine's on the scent. I'm supposed to collect you."

Scott released Kurt and slammed both of his fists down on the table with an angry grunt. "Blob! If he's hurt her I'll..."

"Who now?" Rogue asked.

"New kid, big, very strong," Kurt explained. "You missed the lunch room incident?"

"Ooh," Rogue breathed in understanding. "Right. No, mah lunch break is the second slot, not the first one. Ah got to see the custodian cleaning it up though."

"We don't have time to talk!" Scott insisted loudly. "Kurt!"

"Oh, ja. Rogue?"

"Ah'll see you two there," she said, and called on the power she'd absorbed from Kurt to teleport herself back to the institute.

An hour later, Jean was home safe, Rogue had absorbed not only Fred 'The Blob' Duke's powers, but Wolverine's as well. She'd got hurt bad in the fight, having a bit of heavy equipment dropped on her from a great hight, and he didn't want to move her until she was in a better condition. Lummox held onto the bare skin of her face until he was nearly unconscious and she was all better.

Rogue had called on Freddie's massive strength to pick Logan up off the ground and carry him to the van. She drove his motor cycle back to the mansion too.

He came straight to her once he was up and moving again, well, via the kitchen, but that was hardly a detour.

"C'mon in," she called from where she was meditating on the floor of her room.

"Heard me comin'?" he asked as he sat down opposite her.

"Yeah," she agreed, and opened her eyes. "You've got more to yer mutation than just the healin' an' the claws."

Logan grunted. "The claws aren't even part of it," he answered with derision. "Far as I can tell anyway. They're adamantium, real metal, grafted onto my skeleton by sicko scientists. That's my best guess anyway."

"Ah know," Rogue said softly. "Ah picked up every one of yer memories from the last fifteen years, an' everythin' you c'n remember from _b'fore_ yer mem'ries got scrambled," she snorted softly, an indelicate chuckle passing her lips. "Should make danger-room sessions more interestin'," she quipped. "But yer wrong too. The claws were yours already."

To prove it, she lifted her fist and forced three bone claws out between her knuckles.

"They just got made more dangerous with the metal added," she said with a small smile before she pulled the 'claws' back in. "How're you holdin' up?" she asked.

"I remembered _how_ I landed in that snow bank," he said quietly. "Guess you pulling at all my memories ripped at the block in my brain some. I'm gonna have to talk to Chuck about probin' that hole you made," he added with a slight smile.

Rogue returned it happily. "Glad to be of service," she said.

"Would ya mind if I get back to ya about maybe rippin' that hole a little wider, if Chuck can't help too much?" Logan asked. "I don't want you gettin' nightmares or anything, which you might, since I have no idea what's in that part of my own head, but -"

Rogue's expression softened. "Ah'd be happy to," she interrupted. "Yah can help me work on controlling what Ah absorb at the same time."

Logan smiled in gratitude. "Thanks Stripes."

Rogue giggled. She now had her own nickname from Logan. She kinda liked it.

~oOo~

When 'Porcupine' arrived at the institute – damn she liked Logan's names for the other kids – Rogue collected the power and memories of his 'rival' Pietro. She'd been there with Evan when Pietro got off the bus for the basketball game. When they'd been informed down in the danger-room, she'd slammed her hand against her forehead at Kurt's enthusiasm, but she'd managed to get the chance to place her bare hand on the white-haired boy's shoulder. As his shirt had a wide collar, that meant she got half her hand on his skin, and she held on.

She held on until he passed out.

"What did you do that for, man?" Spike asked, slightly stunned as he stared down at the guy he'd once thought was his friend.

"Why do you care?" Rogue countered. "He set you up and just admitted to framing you."

"I want my record cleared, I don't really want him hurt. He was my best friend growing up," Evan explained.

Rogue sighed. "He'll be fine when he wakes up," she admitted. "Groggy, slowed down a little, an' it might take a week to happen, but he'll be fine. As an added bonus, there isn't _more_ property damages to deal with."

The next day was something of a pool party to celebrate Evan's record being cleared thanks to the confession he'd been smart enough to record Pietro giving, and for all that her own swim suit was more like a thin wetsuit, Rogue still managed to catch Kitty's power when she was knocked off her floating bed and into the water by first Kurt's cannon ball, and then Evan's. She caught Porcupine's as well when he popped the bed and fell through, his foot landing on top of hers.

"It's dangerous out here," Rogue decided aloud, hauling herself over to the side of the pool. "Ah'm gonna head in, maybe train with Logan."

The metal all over his bones had effectively put a stop to Logan ever _enjoying_ going swimming again, even though he still _could_ swim if he needed to, so he'd stayed inside while everyone else was by the pool. Running danger-room simulations most likely, or just having a beer while no one was around to scold him for having alcohol around impressionable teenagers.

She found him in the garage, working on his bike and with a six-pack of beers in a cold-box nearby.

"Hey Stripes," he greeted, not looking up from the bolt he was either tightening or loosening.

"Hey yerself," she answered with a smile. "The half-pint doesn't like her nickname," she informed him.

"Not changin' it," he replied, then stopped. "What happened?" he asked, turning to look at her, concern on his face.

"She fell on me in the pool," Rogue answered. "Her an' the Porcupine both. Ah gotta sort through their memories and make sure Ah'm not gonna have issues with conflicting personalities in mah head."

"Normally meditate in yer room though, doncha?"

"Sure," Rogue answered with an easy shrug. "Right now, Ah'm blamin' Kitty's bubbly, social personality for me seekin' company to be quiet in, rather than just holing up in mah room like Ah'd usually do."

Logan chuckled. "Well, when you're clear in your head again, you can get yer butt over hear and get a free lesson in motor mechanics."

Rogue smiled. "Thanks Logan," she answered, then folded her legs cross-wise and took a deep breath. The sounds of Logan changing the oil of his bike and cleaning all the road ash off the engine parts wasn't like listening to the river and the wildlife that she'd had back in Mississippi, or like the sound of waves against the cliffs below that she could hear if her window here was open, but it was soothing in much the same way. Soon enough she had sorted all the thoughts, memories, energies and powers out from her own – and yes, energy and power were two different things. Energy was like life force, what she got even when she touched a normal human. Power was something that only mutants had, and was different from one to the next.

"Ya know, sometimes Ah wonder if Ah'm gonna live a long time," Rogue said as she came out of it.

"What makes ya think about stuff like that?" Wolverine asked.

"Well, Ah always seem to take a bit of life from the people Ah touch. Ah don't know if that means they'll die sooner or if Ah'll live longer, but like Ah said, just wonder sometimes. Then o' course there's the fact Ah've got _your_ mutation as well, so Ah've got the same healin' factor. Ah don't have ta get old if Ah don't want to, thanks to that," Rogue explained. Of course, there was the knowledge that if she held on _long enough_ she'd kill a person, but she wasn't sure that was the energy drain bit.

Logan snorted in amusement. "Get over here Stripes. Lemme show you how to build an engine from parts."

Rogue grinned. She had the know-how, but there was just something special about being _shown_ how by someone you looked up to.

~oOo~

She was reading under a tree around the back of the school when she heard the tell-tale _bamph_ of Kurt's re-entry, and then a crash that told her he hadn't done _that_ particular teleport with any of his usual grace. Probably just teleported blind, which meant he was getting away from something, and as they were at school that _could_ mean any number of things, though most likely an altercation with someone else from the Institute.

"Kurt?" she called out as she headed down the stairs to the dusty space – she could smell it even from outside – where the blue boy had popped in.

"Oh, Rogue, thank goodness!" Kurt called back, and he was smiling where he stood when she reached him. A sheepish smile that hid his fangs.

"Inducer batteries died again, huh?" she asked, not unfeelingly.

"Ja," he agreed with a nod, "and Scott! He's seriously cramping my style, he _pulled my tail_!"

Rogue winced in sympathy – not empathy, she'd never used her borrowed powers to give herself a tail, so she really didn't know what it felt like, but she could tell he wasn't happy about it – and slung her bag off her shoulder. "Ah don't think if Ah've got the right batteries for yer inducer, but Ah _did_ absorb Storm's powers a while back, so if Ah can get the battery _out_ then Ah should be able to re-charge it," she offered.

Kurt relaxed. "Danke," he said, a grateful smile on his face.

"Yer welcome, but hows about we do this behind that door," Rogue suggested, pointing to the door with the 'Stay Out' sign on it. "Don't want people spottin' us after all."

Kurt nodded. "See you on the other side!" he said with a grin.

One after the other, they teleported to just the other side of the door.

"What _is_ zis place?" Kurt asked in whispered wonder.

"F'rgotten by the looks of things," Rogue answered. "Let's fix this, an' _then_ explore, okay?" she suggested with a grin of her own as she tapped Kurt's inducer where it was still strapped to his wrist.

Kurt unstrapped the gizmo and handed it over, then headed over to the somewhat retro computers that were set up at the other end of the room.

Rogue had unscrewed the back of the watch, taken out the battery, and charged it up again when she heard an unfamiliar voice, slightly digitised, speak.

"January twenty-second, nineteen seventy-eight. Hi there! If you're hearing this message you've got ten seconds before this lab self-destructs. Have a nice day! What's left of it."

Rogue double-timed putting the battery back in. "Port out Kurt!" she yelled.

"Like this!"

"The walls are thick, just into the next room!" she ordered, running through the wall herself the way Kitty would.

Kurt appeared at her side a moment later, and the ka-boom followed not long after him.

"Place wouldn't be booby-trapped more than once," Rogue said, a little breathlessly, adrenaline high as she strapped the watch/inducer around Kurt's wrist again and pressed the button to turn it on.

"You're not going back _in_ there!" Kurt asked, incredulous.

"Compromise?" Rogue suggested.

Kurt nodded, though slightly reluctant, he was willing to hear her out.

"Ah'll try using a power I absorbed... See if Ah can figure out what's best to do."

"What power is zat?" Kurt asked.

Rogue smiled weakly. "When mah powers first appeared, Ah was givin' mah guardian a hug jus' before bed. Ah got her memories, her powers, an' so much of her life force she jus' died right there. Irene's power was to be able to see bits and pieces of the future. Ah don't know about the past, but Ah can give it a go."

Kurt nodded, and lay a comforting hand on Rogue's shoulder, letting her know he was there for her if she ever wanted to talk about it.

Rogue gave him a grateful smile and patted his hand, then closed her eyes as she focused on Irene's power and applied it to whatever had just happened. A moment later, she opened her eyes with a gasp and shot into the demolished room.

"Rogue!" Kurt yelled after her, chasing her in through the destroyed door.

"Feel like bein' a hero?" she asked, the only still-intact device in the room held in her hands.

"What am I doing?"

Rogue smiled. "We're gonna save someone, and if we're lucky, make _two_ friends today."

"Two friends?"

Rogue nodded. "Let's find Todd."

"Toad?"

"Someone say my name?"

"Yeah!" Rogue called out. "C'mon down here!"

"What you goodie-goodie X-freaks want with me?" Tolansky asked as he walked down the stairs to join them. "An' what the hell happened here, yo?"

"Booby-trapped lab," Rogue explained.

"Why are we making friends with the Toad?" Kurt asked.

"Aw c'mon Kurt, just 'cause he don't bathe doesn't make him a bad guy," Rogue teased. "Besides, imagine the fun you'd have chasin' each other 'round the mansion."

Kurt grinned, recalling the one time they _had_ done that, the day he'd arrived from Germany. It _had_ been fun, well, until he'd accidentally 'ported them into the danger-room.

"So, what you want me for yo?" Toad asked again.

"You let me touch you, absorb your power, promise to make sure this thing doesn't get destroyed, not use it on _people_, an' press one particular button when Ah ask you to, an' it's all yours," she said with a smile.

"What's it do?" Todd asked suspiciously.

"Kurt, point it at me," Rogue instructed.

"What?"

"Ah'll be fine, Ah promise. Jus' don't tell the boy-scout Ah'm doin' this," Rogue said firmly.

"Aye, captain," Kurt said with a sigh, and took the device from Rogue. He pushed a button, and with a flash of light, she disappeared.

"Woah," both the boys said.

"I'm not sure this is a safe thing," Kurt said.

Todd smirked. "But I know _just_ what I want to do with it," he said.

Kurt raised an eyebrow.

"Principle Darkholme's new car," Todd explained with a sly grin.

Kurt's face burst into an equally devious grin, and they ran off to have a bit of fun with the device.

An hour later, Rogue teleported in front of them. "Alright guys, when Ah disappear again, Ah need you to push the reset button. Ah'm sick of bein' stuck in the twilight zone with fallin' cars and rainin' furniture."

The boys laughed, and gave her the thumb's up. When they pushed the button in question, Rogue appeared with a guy – one that Kurt recognised as being on the computer screens in the lab before they all blew.

"Kurt, Todd, this is Forge. He made the do-hickey you've been havin' such fun with," Rogue said, performing the introductions as she removed the bit of tech Forge had made for her so she could 'port between the two dimensions – the regular one, and the one where his do-hickey sent stuff. "Now, Ah believe the agreement was that Ah could absorb yer power Todd?"

"I-it's not gonna hurt is it?" he asked nervously.

"It might," Rogue answered honestly. "But Ah've been workin' on it, so it shouldn't be too bad."

"It wasn't when she did it to me a few minutes ago," Forge said with a shrug.

"Nor me, and that was some time ago now," Kurt added.

Todd looked between the two boys, then looked back to Rogue and nodded in acceptance. For her part, Rogue lay her hand lightly on Todd's face.

"That tingles," Toad announced a moment later. "Okay, now it's startin' t' hurt yo."

Rogue pulled her hand away immediately. "Take some time out, have somethin' ta eat, you should be fine tomorrow," she told him as she pulled her glove back on.

"So, you guys are... _mutants_... too?" Forge asked Kurt.

~oOo~

For a while, things were as quiet as they got in Bayville. Not that it was too quiet, but the next big thing to come up was a school production: "_Dracula, the Rock Opera_". Kitty rather obviously had a crush on the guy who had already been cast as the male lead, and based on that alone intended to audition for one of the girl parts. Rogue, on the other hand, intended to audition because of the show itself. A school play, however, wasn't really all that big of a deal. Neither was Spyke being given a video camera for a current affairs project to make up his grade, interesting as it was.

What _was_ a big deal though, really big, was the dangerous wild-man who showed up after Logan's hide for reasons that weren't being shared around.

Rogue didn't wait for an engraved invitation. She put on a short-sleeve shirt with a low collar, pair of comfortable trousers, and only wore her leather jacket while she was on the scooter that took her outside the safety of the mansion. Her memories of this guy, one Victor Creed, aka 'Sabertooth', came from Logan – and she knew two things. One: he wouldn't be able to resist an easy bait. Two: no way was she missing the opportunity to absorb his powers.

She pulled over on the side of the road, lay helmet and jacket over the seat of the scooter, and sat down to meditate under a tree. It would just be a matter of time until the guy showed up, and until then, she'd make a mental list of all the mutants she knew and knew of as compared to all the mutant's she'd absorbed the powers of.

She'd been sitting there for only two minutes before a large hand closed around her throat and her skin started sucking the powers, memories, and energy in, while her mind fought not to accept the personality that accompanied them. She knew she wouldn't be able to get her skin to go from 'on' straight to 'off'. She was working at doing it in stages. Take one less thing at a time, try to take _only_ one thing... She was doing alright, by her guess anyway, as she wrapped her bare hands around the uncovered parts of the arm attached to the hand currently _failing_ to cut off her airways.

"Stripes!"

"Oh, hey Logan," Rogue answered easily, a smile on her face as she actively repressed the physical manifestation of Creed's mutation and pushed the practically dead – and heavy – mutant off of her. "What's up?"

"What's -?" Logan cut off his yell. "What were you _thinkin'_ Stripes?" he asked lowly.

"Ah was thinkin' Ah'd nab his powers and all his memories while he was on hand to give 'em up," she answered easily. "An' Ah don't mind tellin' you, there's more than Ah'd anticipated from lookin' at 'im," she admitted, massaging her temples with the thumb and second finger of the same hand for a moment before she looked up at Logan again.

"Start talkin' Stripes," Logan ordered, almost softly, as he sat down in front of her, _very_ close, just about knee-to-knee.

"There's the chip planted in your brain by a friend o' his f'r starters," Rogue began, and until the sun started to go down and the air started to cool, Rogue told Logan all the things she'd gotten from Sabertooth that related – in any way – to the gap in Logan's memory that covered most of the time between WW2 and when he landed in that snow drift fifteen years ago.


	3. Chapter 3

"Back up there," Rogue said, holding up a hand in a 'halt' gesture. "Our options are survival trainin' with an unknown at some camp, with a bunch of our year-mates, or with Logan?"

Chuck nodded in his wheelchair.

"Is it an altogether thing or individual choice?" she asked, leaning forward intently.

The psychic chuckled as he laced his fingers together. "It's your choice which option you take," he said. "You must choose one, however. There isn't a 'neither' option."

Rogue nodded and sat back in her chair. "Ah think Ah'll stick with a known quantity then," she said. "Ah may have it harder than the folks at the camp, but Ah'll _know_ more-or-less where the limits are."

Chuck smiled. "I'm glad to hear it," he said. "Everyone else, when I talked to them about this, chose Ironback Survival Camp with Sergeant Hawk."

Rogue snorted in amusement. "Just another reason not to go," she declared softly, a wry twist to her lips as she crossed her arms over her chest. She rolled her head back onto her shoulders and closed her eyes, calling up Irene's gift. She wasn't gonna get to see the suffering of the rest of the team in person, so she wanted a glimpse of what it would be like for them at this camp they'd all chosen over training with the Wolverine.

Her eyes snapped open suddenly. "We're gonna have company."

"Oh?" Charles asked, curious, but not thinking it anything serious.

Rogue stretched out her hand suddenly and took hold of the professor's pale, bald dome. When they'd met, and she'd touched him then, she'd only gotten surface thoughts. She hadn't held on long enough to get memories or powers or anything. Now she was, and with Irene's power still turned on as well.

"Suddenly Ah find mahself disillusioned," Rogue said as she took back her hand and stood from her seat. "Ya should try _talkin'_ to yer family Professor, not just shuttin' 'em out or shuttin' 'em away."

"Ugn... R-Rogue?" the man groaned and gasped, trying to get his bearings and his breath once more.

"Ah'm not leavin'," she said, her back to him as she stood facing her bedroom window. "Ah could. Ah still own mah house down in Mississippi, but Ah've made some friends here." Rogue turned her head to the side, but didn't try and look past her hair at the man she'd just absorbed. "So even though Ah'm not a hundred percent sure Ah'd count you among them any more, Ah'm not goin' anywhere either."

"Thank you, Rogue."

She nodded and turned away from him completely once more, and didn't move until she heard him turn his wheelchair around and leave her room. Then she started packing for the survival trip, however brief it would turn out to be.

"Yer packin' too much Stripes," Logan informed her from the door, about ten minutes later. "This is _survival training_, not a camping trip. Now dump out the bag and tell me what's eatin' ya."

Rogue's smile was weak when she turned to face Logan. Since the run-in with Creed (and her using Kitty's powers to take ..._potentially problematic_ foreign bodies out of Logan's brain), Logan had been the person she talked to most about her problems. When he was around. He left regularly to double check that various projects that he'd once been a party to were shut down in a very permanent way, some which he remembered himself, some which Rogue had told him about from Creed's memories.

She went to Kurt to talk things out sometimes, but he was more of a 'little brother' than a 'shoulder to lean on'... And when it came to more feminine-type problems she went to Storm before Jean or Kitty, which sometimes meant they had to wait a while, as Storm was out of the country fairly regularly... But Logan had pretty much become her best friend.

"Why do you think somethin's eatin' me?" she asked, not because she was denying that she _was_ bothered by something, but because she wanted to know what gave it away.

"You threw a framed photograph in yer pack for a _survival_ trip," Logan pointed out, even pointing to the frame where it was poking out of the bag Rogue hadn't dumped out yet. "That speaks of packin' t' _leave_, permanently, rather than just packin' for a walk in the woods with little ol' me."

Rogue picked out the picture and set it back on top of her chest of drawers.

"Ah guess..." she started, then words failed her for a moment. Rogue walked backwards from her drawers to her bed, and just flopped down when she made contact with it, never mind the bag that was also sitting on the bed. She hadn't landed on it, so she wasn't uncomfortable.

"Why are we playin' soldiers anyway?" she asked. "We're not less human suddenly, just cause we can do some different stuff. People have talked about how they wish they could have this power or that power for ages, now it's happening, and what? We pretend it isn't while waiting for it to all blow up in our faces?"

"Some heavy thought," Logan allowed, his tone indicating that he wouldn't even try and answer those questions because, frankly, he didn't _have_ those kinds of answers. "What brought this on?" he asked.

"We're mutants, right?" Rogue asked, tilting her head back to look at Logan. The view was upside-down, but that didn't matter. "But that doesn't make us less prone to the same mistakes, the same screw-ups, the same short-sighted stupidity, as every other _normal_ human out there."

"But because we don't call ourselves human, we forget the whole 'to err is human' thing applies to us as well?" Logan hazarded, trying to guess where Rogue was going with that.

"Basically," she agreed with a shrug, then looked back up to her ceiling with a sigh. "An' Ah just learned a whole lot o' _errs_ the prof has made over the years. Ah think this whole mess comes down to thinkin' that humans and mutants aren't the same."

"They're not," Logan pointed out with an easy shrug.

"Hm," she snorted quietly, amused, a small up-tilt to one corner of her mouth. "Well, maybe. But the 'us' and 'them' mentality ain't helpful."

"Now _that_ I agree with," Logan said, jabbing a finger at her. "All the same Stripes, empty the bag. We leave for your survival trainin' in an hour. Put on your uniform, grab a coat, grab a knife, we'll get a bottle of water each on the way through the kitchen."

Rogue smiled, properly this time, and gave a jaunty salute. "I'll see you down there," she promised.

Logan nodded and vacated Rogue's door for the hallway.

The rest of the team left to catch the bus to Ironback Survival Camp the next morning, some twelve hours after Rogue had already started _her_ survival training with Logan. It was only another two hours after that when Chuck contacted them on Logan's communicator, recalling both of them to the mansion for an emergency. His brother had broken out of the facility that was holding him and was on his way to the Institute. Estimated time of arrival was three hours.

"Dammit!" Logan growled. "We're twelve miles out on foot. We're not gonna make it back in three hours and be in any condition to put up a defence."

"No," Rogue agreed. "We're gonna make it back in five minutes tops an' be fresh as daisies," she said, taking a firm grip of Logan's shoulder and using Kurt's power to teleport them back to the mansion. She had to do it in a few pops, the limit to the teleporting was two miles.

"I forgot you could do that," Logan admitted wryly when they finally stopped in front of the front door of the mansion.

As they walked in, Storm was taking the X-Jet out, providing cover so no one could find – and therefore put themselves in danger by trying to _stop_ – the Juggernaut. Logan went to talk to the professor while Rogue grabbed a quick shower and put on a clean uniform. She rolled up the sleeves.

The alarms started blaring just as she was walking down the main front stairs and thinking about finding a welcome mat.

"Well _hi_ sugar," she greeted with a smile, walking out to greet the large man. Bold as brass, she walked straight up to him and wrapped her own bared arms around one of his equally uncovered limbs. "You here to see your brother? Ah'd a laid out the welcome mat, but Ah couldn't find it," she continued as she felt the man's energy, power, memories all being absorbed by her skin. She felt his anger, and pushed it back, refusing to take his personality with the rest.

"What are you doing!?" a voice, low but female, yelled angrily from behind where the Juggernaut was slowly falling to his knees as he felt the drain.

"Ah'm rather fond of the Institute, not as fond of _all_ the people who live here Ah'll admit, but Ah'd hate to see the place get smashed up all the same," Rogue said, and she said it in a quiet, confiding tone to the man she was still draining.

"You alright there, Stripes?" Logan asked from the door.

"Just fine," she answered.

"Then I guess _I'm_ gonna deal with Mystique."

Rogue didn't watch the fight, just focused on the big guy she was holding on to. "Timber," she announced quietly when he keeled over. She immediately pulled on his power within herself and turned him over so he was on his back. She gently closed his eyes for him and then rolled her sleeves down her arms so that she was safely covered once more.

"You alright there, Stripes?" Logan asked again, more quietly, his fight with Mystique over.

"Ah'm fine," she answered softly. "Ah might hole away in mah room for a while though, if that's alright."

Logan sighed. "Yeah, sure kid. Just be sure to open the door when I knock."

"Sure Logan," Rogue agreed with a small, but grateful, smile. Then she was up on her feet and running back inside.

~oOo~

A funeral was held for Cain Marco, aka the Juggernaut, but Charles was the only family present. Rogue also took a front-row seat at the funeral though, despite no family connection. She'd been the one to kill him, and while the other teens hadn't been told, all the grown-ups in the mansion knew. The coroner's report listed heart failure as cause of death, so there was no further inquiry from the police. Best guess, as far as the cops were concerned, was that so much sudden activity after being kept totally immobile in 'cellular paralysis bio-fluid' for so long had been too much for the guy's system.

Kurt noticed that Rogue wasn't exactly herself though, and as she'd claimed him as a little brother already, he was more that willing to _be_ that brother she needed – and he was of the opinion that she _needed_ some family right now.

"Rogue?" he called as he knocked on the door to her bedroom the day after the funeral. "Can I come in?"

Silence answered him, but he waited, and a few seconds later Rogue was there, holding her door open for him.

"Want to talk about it?" Kurt asked when she closed the door. "I know you usually go to Storm or Wolverine for the heavy conversations," he said quickly. "But I want you to know that I'm here for you too, if you need me."

Rogue smiled, just a little bit, and hugged him – she was covered, it was safe – and she pressed her face against his shirt. "Thanks Kurt," she said. "Ah guess Ah'm jus' bein' stupid, but... Ah miss mah home."

Kurt wrapped his arms around Rogue's shoulders. "You mean, down in Mississippi?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered. "Ah can't think why though. Ah mean, sure Ah had the house all to mahself, an' Ah could take mah dingy down to the river whenever Ah felt like goin' fishin', but Ah've got _family_ here. Ah've got you, an' Logan, an' Storm, an' Ah wouldn't trade ya f'r the world... but Ah guess... Ah miss drivin' down to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras parade, an' gumbo, an' havin' the kitchen to mahself, an' the sound of the river out mah window... the ocean against the cliffs is diff'rent."

Kurt patted her back and smiled in understanding. "You're homesick, but you've got two homes now," he suggested. "The home where you family is right now, and the home that's just yours, where you grew up."

"Yeah," Rogue agreed. "Ah guess that's about it. Like Ah said, Ah'm jus' bein' stupid."

"No you're not," Kurt countered. "I miss Germany as well, and that's even further away than Mississippi. I miss my parents, and mama's strudel, and the smell of fresh snow... but like you, this is home now for me too."

For a while, they just sat on Rogue's bed, holding on to each other, silently reinforcing that they would _be there_ for each other, whatever happened.

"I do have _one_ question," Kurt said after a while, breaking the silence. "What is 'gumbo'?"

Rogue couldn't help it, she laughed. "Well, let's go down to the kitchen an' see if Ah can't make up a batch, though o' course we _might _have to do some shoppin'. Ah doubt the professor stocks _all_ the ingredients for gumbo."

It only took ten minutes for Rogue to confirm that they were going to _have_ to do some shopping. It was a further five hours (shopping time included) before the smell of the gumbo began to filter past the kitchen door and tickle at the noses of the _rest_ of the people in the Institute.

"I see you're feelin' better," Logan commented as he walked into the kitchen to find Rogue at the stove and Kurt perched on a barstool at her side.

"Do you have _any_ idea how hard it was to find catfish around here? Ah mean _good quality_ catfish?" Rogue demanded idly, then turned around, a smile on her face. "Yeah, Ah'm feelin' better," she agreed.

"She's been teasing me with delicious smells for _hours_!" Kurt cried, "and says that it needs to simmer for another _two_ before it will be ready to serve!"

"Two hours?" Kitty's voice joined in, a whining lilt to it. "But, like, it smells so good _now_!"

Rogue shook her head. "Two hours, a final dash of Tabasco and a stir, and _then_ serve," she said firmly. "Ah _do_ sympathise though."

From behind Logan came a quiet hubbub of whining and grumbling, and the man turned around to see Scott, Jean and Evan all making similar complaints against waiting the extra two hours.

"Ah'm sorry," Rogue said, falsely sweet as she raised a hand to her ear. "What's that you said? Y'all don't mind lettin' it simmer _four_ hours to get the flavours _really_ rich? An' y'all are willin' ta take me on in the danger-room while the pot does it's thing?"

There were hasty denials and quick backward steps.

Rogue smirked. "That's what Ah thought."

Logan chuckled. "You'll make a great parent one day Stripes," he commented, "and that danger-room suggestion of yours isn't a bad one. After all, everyone's survival training got cut short with the emergency re-call to the mansion."

"Which turned out to not be needed," Kurt quipped.

"Don't complain man!" Evan rushed out. "There was no _way_ I was gonna survive all those bugs for a week! The mosquitoes were as big as pelicans!"

~oOo~

Friday, school was out, the weekend beckoned, and it was great weather in general. Scott got the news that his little brother – who he'd thought was dead – had just been picked up by Cerebro. In Hawaii. While the rest of them were left behind – Logan and Chuck taking Scott in the X-Jet and Storm elsewhere for the moment – Kurt suggested they try a more local beach, since they were being left out of the Hawaii trip. Jean was missing, so Rogue left her a note.

"Oh man," she sighed in relief. "You feel that ocean breeze? Ah've been goin' into meltdown all covered up like this. Ah hate it."

"Yeah?" Kurt countered. "You should try being blue and furry. It's murder," he said, taking a moment to turn off his image inducer.

"Kurt! The road!" Rogue yelped in warning.

The road had just pulled upwards in a very untidy fashion, just a little ways in front of them. A short and not at all fun ride later, and they'd been driven off the road only to be stopped by Blob at the bottom of a dirt road, and then buried in the sand.

Kitty started hauling Evan up through the sand, while Kurt and Rogue both 'ported top-side.

With a wicked smirk, Rogue dove straight for Lance. He was the only mutant present she _hadn't _absorbed yet, so she was going to take the opportunity to add him to her collection – and figure out what the hell was going on here from his memories.

"Aw shit!" she hissed as she dropped him, now unconscious. "Lose!" she yelled. "It's a competition where the winner gets kidnapped! Lose!" she yelled, running towards the other fights.

"Vas!?" Kurt exclaimed, and was distracted enough for Toad to push him face-first into the sand.

"Ooh, like, don't need telling," Kitty said as she phased through the Blob. "I, like, totally need a _shower_ now," she added before she fainted on the sand.

"Daniels doesn't _need _telling," Pietro snickered, standing on top of the sand pile where Evan was buried up to his neck.

Rogue took off her gloves and jammed them into one of her pockets when she saw the large metal orbs fly over the rocky outcropping above them. "Kurt, get everybody home," she ordered. "Ah'll be fine."

"I-if you say so," he answered, unsure what was going to happen, but willing to trust her.

"Ah do," she answered, and climbed – willingly – into the damned orb. "See y'all soon!" she promised, waving as it closed over her head.

The trip, for her, was mercifully short. She didn't like to think what Storm would have been going through if _she_ got abducted by one of these things, what with the claustrophobia and all, and she climbed out easily when the orb opened over her head again.

"I admit to being pleasantly surprised at how willing you are," commented a man in a cape and helmet.

"Ah got the low-down from Lance before he dropped," she said, poking the man in the nose with the tip of her finger, then spreading her hand out over his face – beneath the helmet – when she felt him still at the jolt of her touch. She held on, tight, as he fell to his knees before her. She held on when he started twitching under her grasp. She held on when he breathed his last breath, and then she sneered at him.

"Hey, wha' chu do, yo?" Todd asked, his eyes wide with fear.

"Ah killed him," she answered dispassionately, then looked over at Pietro. "Gonna cry f'r daddy?" she asked, "or go visit yer sister an' tell her the bastard's dead?"

Pietro paled so his skin was almost the same colour as his hair.

Rogue put a hand to her own head. Another whole life's worth of memories, experiences, pain, mistakes and regrets. She was gonna have _such_ a headache if she didn't get time to meditate properly soon. She'd had a _little_ time to deal with the bits of Lance now in her head on the flight over, but a whole _life_ took time to process. As she'd already learned with Irene and Mystique, but Magneto had a couple of decades up on those two.

"So now what, yo?" Todd asked, confused. "We won, but we're not gonna get the prize."

"The _prize_," Rogue said derisively, "was to be exposed to radiation that would have totally de-humanised you."

"What?!" several voices yelled at once, and not just the boys she'd arrived with.

"Alex Masters, right?" Rogue asked, walking up to the blonde who'd just arrived with Scott.

The younger boy stepped back nervously.

"It's alright," Scott reassured his brother. "Her touch really only tingles."

"Yeah," Todd agreed, carefully avoiding looking at the cooling body of Magneto. "You tell her it's startin' ta hurt and she pulls back sharp."

"It's kinda the ultimate in empathy," Rogue explained, holding up her hand nearer her own face than Alex's. "Ah absorb yer memories, yer powers, you don't lose 'em, but Ah get everything from yer point of view."

Alex nodded, and took a step closer.

Rogue touched him lightly, and pulled away after just a few seconds.

"Not too bad, was it sugar?" she said kindly.

"No," Alex agreed. "Actually, I feel great," he said with a laugh. "For once, my joints don't all feel like they're on fire."

Rogue's small smile disappeared. "It'll come back," she said. "Ah copy yer powers, Ah don't take 'em away from you. Not f'r long anyway."

Alex nodded in understanding.

"Now, let's get the people Magneto abducted, hop in the X-Jet, and head on home," Rogue suggested with a smile, leading the way to where Jean, Storm and the Professor were all shut away in pressurised tanks. "Wakey wakey," she called as she released them all – properly, as opposed to just blasting them out like Scott had almost done.

"Rogue!" the three called out, gratitude and wonder in their voices, and just a hint of pride as well in Storm's case as she wrapped her arms around the girl's shoulders.

"Yeah, yeah, enough with the mushy stuff," she objected, though the smile on her face belied her words. "Everyone else should be waitin' back home."


	4. Chapter 4

It all was feeling a bit packed on for Rogue, she hadn't really had a chance to _properly_ meditate, calm her mind and sort through everything in it – and she needed to do that to keep _herself_ straight, not just all the other stuff she'd absorbed. With just about all of the school focusing on the girl's soccer team, she figured it was probably her best opportunity to take a bit of time 'sick' off school, maybe go home for a while and make sure the house hadn't grown a carpet of dust or anything.

After all, with all the new kids just arrived at the Institute, she wasn't about to get the quiet she needed by hanging around there. She'd already absorbed Tabitha's power while dodging Evan in the hall, been crashed into by the human cannonball and gotten _his_ power, and had _three out of five_ of Jamie (the boy was understandably called 'Multiple') land on her when they were crashed into by a flying Sunspot/Roberto – who had also wound up on top of her. That was four out of the nine new kids in less than twenty-four hours. She didn't mind getting more powers, really she didn't, but getting all those memories as well was doing a number on her skull.

The headache might just kill her.

"Are you sure about this Rogue?" Charles asked when she presented her request to him for a week back in Mississippi.

"Sure Ah'm sure," she answered. "It wasn't exactly easy to find somewhere quiet around the Institute _before_ the new kids showed up. Let 'em adjust, cool down some, should be alright in a week 'r so Ah reckon, but Ah really need some quiet 'alone time'."

Charles nodded. "Very well," he allowed. "A week back in Coldecott for you, and maybe we'll do some building up here, so that you'll have more space for somewhere quiet up here."

Rogue nodded. "As long as mah window is still an ocean view, Ah'll manage when Ah get back," she said, and left to pack her things.

Jubilation and Ray crashed into her as she was rounding a corner on her way to her room, and she absorbed their powers before she managed to push them off. Great, now all she needed to have the full set was Bobby, Amara and Rahne (she said it was pronounced 'Rain', but most of the kids pronounced it 'Ronnie'). Oh, and Jean. Still hadn't gotten Jean for some reason.

She made it back to her room without any further contact, and sat down on her bed quickly. She _tried_ to meditate and sort through the powers and memories she had just absorbed, but there was just too much noise coming from beyond door and window both. With a disgusted grunt, Rogue gave up trying, and just hurried to pack.

"You leavin' us kid?" Logan asked when he appeared in her doorway a few minutes after that.

"Just for a while," Rogue answered. "Ah need t' clear mah head Logan, or Ah'm gonna go crazy. Me goin' crazy would be a _bad thing_. So Ah'm takin' some time out while the new kids settle in. Ah'll be back in a week, Ah promise."

Logan grunted and nodded, accepting Rogue's explanation. "How're you gettin' there?" he asked.

"Ah figured Ah'd take mah scooter," she answered. "Drive some, teleport some, alternate 'til I get there. Enjoy the open road f'r a bit."

Logan smirked. "Or you could let Storm an' me fly you down in the X-Jet. We could use a bit of time off too ya know," he pointed out.

Rogue smiled. "Thanks Logan," she said gratefully.

"And _don't_ forget to tell the Elf where and why yer goin'," Logan ordered firmly before he turned and left.

~oOo~

A week at home in Mississippi was _just_ what the doctor ordered. Rogue even caught up with Cody, which was a nice surprise, though it was less surprising to learn that they didn't really have a lot in common. Still, they parted as friends and she gave him some advice on how to approach a different girl who'd caught his notice while she was there. Rogue was able to sort out her head, catch catfish with her bare hands, make gumbo without her house-mates breathing down her neck to let them have a taste before it was ready, and catch up with the people she hadn't seen since she'd left.

Then the week was up and she was back at the Institute... to find out that Tabitha had left and Kurt was rather seriously grounded.

What felt like a few days later, the entire student body was sitting in the school hall while Principle Kelly (new guy, came in the day Rogue left for her week away) held a bit of an awards ceremony. The 'most valuable player' was Jean Grey, not really a surprise, she _was_ the team's 'star' striker and generally popular to boot.

"Thank you, Principle Kelly," Jean said once she was up on stage, and then he gestured for her to make a bit of a speech. "A-and, I-I want to thank a-all of you..." she stammered out, though the stammer was clearly one of shocked delight.

For her part, Rogue couldn't help but think "That's right Jean, ride that popularity train for all it's worth." Then she noticed that Jean was looking _right_ at her. Eyes locked. "Don't tell me she heard that thought... Jean?" Rogue asked, within her mind.

Jean nodded slightly, even as she tried to keep going. "I-" she tried.

"Get off the stage before you lose it," Rogue projected to Jean, very focused and very deliberately, using Chuck's power. "It would be a _real_ bad place to lose control."

"I really don't know what else to say," Jean said with a quavering smile. "Just, thanks," she said, and hurried back down off the stage. Applause followed as she returned to her seat, and Principle Kelly took the podium once more.

Rogue was out of her seat and around the side to catch up with Jean before Scott got there. She might not have gotten along with Jean the best, but all the same she had a feeling this – whatever it was – wasn't something she wanted Scott to worry about. That meant hiding it behind the label 'girl talk'.

"You alright?" Scott asked as he came up once the show was over.

"Yeah," Rogue answered. "We're jus' fine. You go on ahead, 'kay Scott?"

Scott looked over to Jean, wanting to make absolutely sure. "Really, I'm fine," she assured him.

Scott nodded. "Alright," he allowed. "I'll see you both after school?" he asked, not having any more classes with either of them that day.

Jean opened her mouth, and Rogue was fairly sure she was going to say something about Duncan Matthew's party, so she cut across. "Nah, we're gonna spend some 'girl time' t'gether f'r a while," Rogue said.

Scott nodded and hurried out of there.

"You really want to spend some 'girl time' with me?" Jean asked, surprised.

Rogue smirked. "Course, mah idea o' 'girl time' might be a bit diff'rent t' yours," she said.

"Well, we could go shopping for something new to wear to Duncan Matthews' party," Jean suggested with a smile.

"Me? Go to a party?" Rogue asked, sceptically. "Hosted by _Matthews_?"

"Please? Be there for me," she said, a hand on Rogue's shoulder. "Besides, it'll be fun!"

Rogue shook her head. "Matthews is a jerk an' a bully who gets away with stuff because he's a jock and popular," the southern belle said firmly.

"But he throws a great party," Jean wheedled.

"Oh alright!" Rogue caved in. "But Ah reserve the right to bring him down a few pegs," she stated firmly.

Jean giggled. "Deal!"

"An' _don't_ tell Scott, those two just get stupid in each other's company. The sooner you definitely _pick one_ the sooner it should stop," Rogue added, rolling her eyes heavenward as though praying.

"What?!" Jean yelped.

"Uh, they both want to be yer boyfriend," Rogue said. "Duh!"

Jean blinked a couple of times, and a blush blossomed on her cheeks.

Rogue sighed. The psychic hadn't known. Really, powers of observation, anyone? Well, now she knew, and hopefully would actually _do_ something about it soon. Really, the way those boys competed was just so stupid.

When they got to the party, Rogue was wearing a long-sleeved, dark-purple turtle-neck and a pair of her favourite black jeans, very safely covered, and not going to make any accidental contact thanks to her gloves. Rogue had teleported them out so they wouldn't have to worry about a car if they needed to make a quick getaway for whatever reason – and thanks to Irene's powers, Rogue had a fairly solid feeling that they'd need to.

"Hey, Jean!" Duncan greeted happily. "And...?" he trailed off when he spotted Rogue at Jean's side.

"This is Rogue, she lives with me," Jean introduced. "I asked her to come, hope you don't mind."

"Nah, I don't mind," Duncan agreed, his eyes running up and down Rogue's figure once before he nodded to himself and waved them both inside.

"You saw what Ah saw back there?" Rogue asked quietly.

Jean winced, but nodded.

"That's why, where Ah'm from, people like me don't party with people like him," Rogue said firmly, then shook her head and flashed Jean a smile. "School dances excepted. Mah last one back in Mississippi, Ah got asked to dance by a jock, but he was also a sweet guy, shy, but talented with sports. Duncan's just a jerk all over."

Jean giggled at the piece of confidence that had just been shared with her. The pair of them enjoyed the party for about an hour before Jean grabbed at her head, pushed Duncan away from her, and ran out onto the balcony over the pool.

"Jean!" Duncan yelled after her, and went to chase, but Rogue got in the way.

"Back off," she ordered, and pulled one of Cody's moves to knock the guy down. Satisfied that Duncan's pride was dented and he wouldn't follow, Rogue went out after Jean. "Jean," she called softly. "Jean, focus," she said, a little louder this time. "C'mon Jean. Jean?" Rogue asked cautiously.

"Rogue!" Jean called desperately, raising tear-filled eyes to lock onto Rogue's face.

"We're gettin' outta here," Rogue decided. She lay a hand on Jean's shoulder and began the process of 'porting them back to the Institute, two miles at a time. It only took two 'ports, so it wasn't too bad.

"Thanks Rogue," Jean said gratefully. "It was just too much."

Rogue nodded. "You should talk to the professor, an' get some sleep. There's track an' field try-outs tomorrow," she said. "G'night."

"Goodnight."

~oOo~

Rogue was in the first 'lot' of track try-outs the next day with Evan, Kurt and the rest of the 'new kids' from the Institute, as well as about half the student population. They were through by lunch, at which time they stopped, went home if they wanted or hung about to watch as the second 'lot' came out. The second 'lot' had Jean, Scott and Kitty in it.

Rogue, for her part, went straight back to the Institute, put on her uniform, and 'ported down to a ledge on the cliff that got used for rescue training. Presently, she was using it to help calm and empty her mind, sort through all the memories in her head – both hers and all the memories she'd absorbed from other people. Now and then she still stumbled across a memory, or set of memories, that she hadn't really paid attention to before, or had but forgot about.

Like Wanda Maximoff.

"Note to self," she mumbled as she listened to the crashing of the waves below her. "_Find_ that girl."

Rogue's meditation – which she'd intended to keep up for the rest of the day – was abruptly cut short by a call from the communicator in her belt. It was Kitty claiming an emergency with Jean in the mansion, all X-men were to be suited up. As she was already suited up, Rogue just 'ported herself into the entry-way of the central building, then ran to where she could sense everybody else – thank you Logan's heightened sense of hearing.

"What is going on up there?" Kurt asked as Chuck wheeled out of the elevator, and Logan followed, half-carrying Scott over his shoulder. Just as the doors closed behind them, the whole house shook.

"Yeah!" Kitty added, fear absent from her voice, only concern present – and that concern not for herself. "Is Jean alright?" she asked.

"No, she's not," Chuck answered, holding a cold-pack wrapped in cloth to his head. He'd either taken a bump to the head or Jean had hurt the man's psyche. Possibly both. "Her powers are evolving too rapidly for her to control."

There was a crash above them, and the whole building shook a second time.

"I've gotta get back up there!" Scott said, turning around to head back to the elevator, tattered shirt and all.

"Wait! You can't even get _close_ to her," Logan countered, stalling the teen with a hand on his shoulder. "We need a plan."

"An' a better one than puttin' the telekinetic girl in a room full of stuff," Rogue put in quietly.

"Well what do _you_ suggest then?!" Scott demanded, rounding on her.

Rogue drew a deep breath, pulled herself up as tall as her natural frame allowed, and took off her gloves. "To much power, right?" she asked.

"Yes," Charles answered, then his eyes went wide. "Rogue! You're not planning to -"

"Gone," Rogue said, cutting him off before she teleported out, up a few floors, and re-materialised directly above where she'd been before, only this time on the same floor as Jean. Fortunately for her, this meant she was outside the dangerous orbit of demolished detritus that was circling Red where she floated, eyes shut, in the middle of the room.

Rogue took a bare moment to analyse the mess that was being made, then focused on Jean, and teleported again, reappearing right behind the taller girl, and grabbing onto her, tightly, before she could get swept away by the swirling psychic winds. Rogue locked herself in place with her legs around Jean's waist, and her own arms coming up from under Jean's until Rogue could rest her bare hands on Jean's face.

"Breathe," Rogue chanted. "Breathe," she repeated, and chanted it over and over as she drew off thoughts, memories, energy, _powers_. "Breathe Red. C'mon Jean. Breathe. Focus on the in and out of your own lungs. Nothing else exists. Just breathe."

And suddenly they were falling, and Rogue was aware of Jean having _stopped_ breathing.

"Oh shit," Rogue cried quietly, and hurried to pull Jean's extra top off and up over her face. Once it was over Red's mouth, Rogue breathed into the girl's lungs, then pumped her chest. Breathe, pump, breathe. "Breathe, dammit!" she yelled at the other girl, and called up Ororo's power just enough to send a bolt of lightning into the girl's chest, aiming to jump-start her heart.

Jean coughed, and Rogue sighed in relief.

"Rogue?" Jean asked weakly. "What happened?"

Rogue tilted a slight smile. "Oh, nothin' major," she said. "Just, ya know, you destroyin' a fair whack of the mansion while unconscious and then nearly dyin', which Ah suggest you keep to yerself if ya don't want them all watchin' ya like yer gonna keel over at any second, but yer okay now."

Jean blinked once, and then managed to look around, look past Rogue to see the damage she'd caused. "I did this?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," Rogue agreed. "The Prof said yer powers were evolvin' too fast for ya, but you should be okay now, an' if yer not, Ah recommend meditation. _Regularly_."

Jean smiled weakly. "Thanks Rogue," she said. "Really."

"Rogue!"

"Jean!"

"Stripes!"

"Jean! Rogue!"

"Man!"

"Are you both alright?"

Jean blinked in surprise at the rush of other X-men coming out of the elevator, and turned curious green eyes on Rogue.

"Ah may have skipped givin' them all a choice in agreein' to mah plan or not," Rogue admitted, a little sheepishly.

"Rogue, are you alright?" Kurt asked as he finally reached her, upon which time he took hold of her shoulders and started performing a check for injuries with both eyes and hands.

"Jean! Are you okay?" Scott was right behind Kurt, but his priority was the taller girl as he did pretty much the exact same thing.

"Stripes, don't you _ever_ do anything that crazy again," Logan reprimanded, a frown on his face and he towered over where Rogue was sitting, Kurt still checking her over for injuries by prodding her here and there.

"Like, you're both okay!" Kitty cheered, relief written all over her.

"Man, Rogue. Way to give us all a heart-attack," Evan quipped, but he was smiling too. "Glad it worked though."

"Yes," Charles agreed. "Please Rogue, in future, try to remember that there's a reason you're part of a _team_. Now, Jean, I believe we should schedule a session to work on your control over your powers?"

"Yes Professor," Jean agreed with a slightly sheepish smile. She was leaning against Scott's chest by this point, and looked quite content with that position.

"Now, if y'all don't mind," Rogue said, speaking up for the first time since Kurt had grabbed hold of her and Logan had reached her side. "Ah need some quiet time to get _mah_ head in order. Ooh, an' a glass of water f'r mah headache," she added as she extricated herself from Kurt's hold and headed for the door.

"Stripes?" Logan asked as he watched her walk towards the door.

"Ah'll be at the rescue trainin' area if y'all need me f'r somethin'," she called over her shoulder, then waved before teleporting out. Then she popped back in, a bottle of water in one hand. "An' don't let Red do _anythin'_ strenuous f'r a week!" she ordered sternly. "That was _not_ a light touch, that was a _serious_ drain. Keep the fluids up, the food light, and the activity to a minimum. Do Ah make mahself clear, Miss Popularity?" Rogue asked seriously, pointing the finger at Red while her other hand was fisted on her hip.

"Y-yes Ma'am," Jean stuttered out.

"Good," Rogue said, and disappeared again with a nod.

"Like, Rogue can be kinda scary when she wants to be, huh?" Kitty commented quietly, staring at the space where Rogue had been.

Jean nodded, her own eyes wide and also still fixed on that same point.

"Alright all a ya," Logan said, grabbing their attention. "You can either clear out to a different part of the mansion or you can lend a hand cleanin' this place up."

Kurt immediately vanished in a small puff of smoke and Kitty likewise fell through the floor. Evan got on his skateboard and was on his way to the elevator while Scott picked up Jean and followed after him.

Logan and Charles both laughed at how quickly they cleared out.

"I confess, I didn't think Rogue would be able to handle it," Charles admitted once it was just the two of them.

"You underestimate the kid," Logan said, amused.

"Well, she _did_ just recently say she needed to get away from the noise of Bayville," Charles defended. "I thought-"

Logan's laugh cut him off. "Kid was homesick a bit before that," he explained, "not that she would admit it to just anyone, and you have to admit it was _pretty loud_ around here while she was gone."

"Yes, I suppose you're right."

~oOo~

Rumours were flying around the school. Someone had trashed one of the bathrooms, Mr McCoy had had some kind of fit in two of his classes, and... now he was asking for the Professor.

It was Red who answered the door and let him in, and it was also her that told Rogue about it. As she'd been present for one of his 'fits', she was able to give Rogue a good idea of what she _thought_ was going on.

"An' what d'you want _me_ to do about it?" Rogue asked, eyebrow raised at the teen standing in her bedroom door.

"I thought... He might be having the same sort of problem that I was a couple of weeks ago, and you might be able to help in the same way," Jean offered.

Rogue chuckled. "Well, alright. Mr McCoy _is_ a pretty good teacher. Ah'd hate to see somethin' happen to 'im," she agreed.

"Great," Jean said with a relieved smile. "He's down with the Professor right now."

Rogue nodded and got up from her bed, exited her room and closed the door, waving Jean off as she did, then teleported down.

"I'm sorry Hank," she could hear Chuck say on the other side of the door. "There's nothing I can do for you," she heard him say, and she could hear the pain in his voice to admit such a thing.

"No!" begged Mr McCoy. "Don't say that! I'm too dangerous to be trusted!"

Rogue felt it tug at her heart-strings to hear that sort of brokenness in one of her teachers. She knocked on the door, then let herself in before actually waiting for permission to do so.

"Maybe Ah can help," she offered as she stood in the door.

"Rogue?" Charles asked, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"Jean told me," Rogue explained, then closed the door behind her and walked into the room properly. "About Mr McCoy bein' here, an' what happened today in her gym class." At this point, she offered a small smile to Mr McCoy. "She thought Ah'd be able ta help you, the way Ah helped her when _her_ powers were gettin' too much for her."

"You can do that?" Mr McCoy asked, hope shining brightly in his eyes.

Rogue looked down, just a bit uncomfortable with the attention. "Ah don't know f'r sure," she admitted. "With Jean, Ah was pullin' off all the extra stuff that was distractin' her, she was already lost an' jus' needed some help gettin' back. Ah don't know if all Ah'll end up doin' is rippin' off whatever band-aid you've got holding your mutation back."

"Anything," Mr McCoy insisted. "I can't fight it any more, I'm... I'm just worn out," he admitted.

"I think we'd better adjourn to the danger-room," Charles suggested. "Just in case. After all Hank, your mutation _is_ dangerous."

Mr McCoy nodded, and Rogue followed them both out of the room and down the halls rather than teleporting straight there.

"I'll wait up in the observation deck," Chuck said, leaving them at the main doors into the danger-room.

Once the two of them were inside, Rogue directed Mr McCoy to sit down, legs crossed, on the floor. She took the same position opposite him.

"What happened with Jean was not controlled, and barely planned," Rogue explained. "Ah called on mah gift and mah gift alone, apart from teleporting in to her. This is different. We've got a controlled, calm environment, an' Ah want us to try an' keep it that way. So, Ah'll be usin' more than jus' mah gift to do this. Alright?" she asked.

Hank nodded solemnly.

"Alright," Rogue said, and took a deep breath. "We're gonna start with meditation," she instructed, and lay her hands – bare – palm up on her knees. "Close yer eyes an' think of a time or place where you're at peace."

Hank nodded, and closed his eyes.

Rogue reached out with the telepathy she'd absorbed from both Chuck and Red, and joined him in his chosen place of peace. She was surprised to find it was the amphitheatre on the north side of town. Not that she let that slow her down.

"Alright, the stage. On this stage is you," she instructed, "just as you are now. Good. Now remember, this place is your safe place, where yer at peace with the world, and calm. Nothin' bad can or will happen here."

"I understand," Mr McCoy said softly.

"Good," Rogue said. "Because Ah'm gonna bring the manifestation of your mutation here," she informed him firmly, and brought her hands up off her knees to reach out to touch his hands where they rested on his knees, just very lightly brushing the tips of her fingers against his palms. This was likely to be a prolonged contact, she didn't want to be draining large amounts for the whole thing.

He struggled, not physically, but within his mind. On the stage he had created for himself as a place of peace and safety, he backed away from the beast that appeared there with him.

"No, Mr McCoy. Here, even the beast feels safe. An animal is only violent when it feels threatened, only dangerous when it has something precious it must protect. Here, there are no threats, it has nothing to fear, and there is no scent of fear to cause it to change its mind," Rogue ordered, thought she kept her voice measured, soft, speaking with a regular beat in a soft tone, calm and reasonable. And very deliberately skipping over the issue of hunting for food.

"That serum you've been makin' an' takin' has made yer inner beast feel threatened f'r all these years," Rogue said softly as she brought the man and his mutation closer together slowly. "He's fought hard an' long, the constant threat, the constant fightin', only makin' him stronger. Like an abused animal, he hates the hand that had fed him, because that same hand beats and poisons him. You must earn 'is trust again, an' 'is f'rgiveness, or you will continue to feel this pain."

"How do I do that?" Hank asked, in something of a daze as he stared at the large, blue-furred animal that he held within himself.

"He is _your_ mutation, Mr McCoy," Rogue said. "His pain, the pain that _you_ have been causin' him, is your pain too, because you are the same bein'. Begin first by acknowledgin' that. Admit it, aloud, Mr McCoy."

"I am the same person as the beast within me. He is the same as me. We have the same pain," Hank said.

Rogue could feel it. It was like his eyes were opened by that revelation. "What else do you have, that your mutation also must, because you are the same person?" she asked. "What do you care about?"

"My passion is to teach," Mr McCoy said firmly, and then faltered. More tentatively, he continued. "Animals... care for their young, and show them how to survive in the world, so that their legacy will live on after them."

On the stage in his mind, with Rogue watching over both aspects of him, Hank saw the beast within him begin to smile, just a little.

"But... I made my own mutation fear people because of the pain I caused it, and so it would lash out at those it would otherwise protect," Hank said softly, thinking out loud, working it through with the taste of each word in his mouth.

"How will you let go of your fear?" Rogue asked. "Because the fear you have caused to appear in your mutation is a fear that you harbour yourself."

Hank breathed in sharply at that. He was afraid of people? He looked at where the image of his mutation sat within his mind and thought about that. He feared... that he would hurt people because he could not control himself, could not control the animal within himself. He feared... that they would lock him away in a cell, in a cage, if that ever happened. He feared...

On the stage of the amphitheatre, Hank got down on his knees in front of the beast. He lay down and showed himself as vulnerable, not making eye-contact. Even as a student of chemistry, not zoology, he knew how different animals displayed submission.

The beast approached him, slowly, carefully, but with curiosity showing more than fear. As Rogue had said, this place was a place of peace and safety – not fear.

"If we work together, rather than against each other, we will be better able to achieve our goals," Hank said softly when the beast gently nudged his side with one great hand. A hand that, while very large, and very hairy, was not at all clawed. He'd never noticed that before. There was a lot of hair, and very big teeth, but no claws on either the hands or feet. It was like... a gorilla, sort of.

Rogue had felt his eyes open in understanding before. This time, _he_ felt it. He had nothing to fear from his mutation. It was simply a part of himself, perhaps a part of every person on some level, but closer to the surface for him.

"Thank you Rogue," Hank said, a smile on his face as he opened his eyes and looked at the girl who, on a normal day, he was the role-model for.

Rogue smiled back and gave Mr McCoy's hands a gentle squeeze before letting go entirely. "You'll be alright now Mr McCoy?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes, I believe _we_ will," he answered. "If I may ask though, where did you get the idea for your approach?"

"Uh, well... Part of it's just the normal meditation Ah do ta sort out mah own thoughts from all the other thoughts in mah head that Ah've absorbed from other people b'cause of mah mutation. 'Nother part of it came from the rituals tha' the Juggernaut found when he was lookin' f'r a way to 'waken his mutation. The rest was... well, some of it was telepathy from Red, er, Jean an' the professor, an' some of it was the first mutation Ah ever absorbed. Irene could see pathways an' probabilities, which is useful when Ah'm tryin' ta guide you on somethin', Ah guess..." Rogue attempted to explain.

Hank lay one of his large hands on Rogue's slim shoulder. "Well, thank you," he repeated. "Is there anything else I should know?" he asked.

Rogue closed her eyes and delved into Irene's power, leaving all the others behind for a moment as she focused on just that one. "Uh... you might have a _few_ small physical changes," Rogue warned. "Ah suggest checkin' in the mirror ev'ry day before you leave the house, an' keep the prof on speed-dial in case you find yourself in need of an image inducer for somethin'. Other 'an that, Ah can't predict any problems f'r ya."

"That's good to know," Hank said, gratitude awash in his voice and tone. "For now though, I suppose I should head home for my own bed, and let you get to sleep as well, since it's a school day tomorrow."

"Sure," Rogue agreed, and they walked out of the danger-room together, to be met by Chuck and a few of the students at the door.

"You're gonna be okay now Teach?" Evan asked.

"Yes," Mr McCoy answered, and he stood before them all like a man who'd had the weight of the world removed from his shoulders.

"Alright Rogue!" Kitty cheered. "You're, like, totally the best at saving the day!"

"I knew you could do it," Jean said, more quietly but no less surely.

"Good showing Stripes," Logan commented. "Glad it worked out for ya Hank," he added, shaking the man's hand.

"You're alright?" Kurt asked, prodding Rogue's shoulder. "You're not going to disappear on me again, are you?"

Rogue chuckled. "Only to mah bedroom," she answered. "Ah'm fine Kurt," she promised. "Jus' tired."

"Then let's get you to bed," Ororo suggested, coming up behind her and wrapping a blanket around the girl's shoulders.

"Sounds like a great idea," Rogue agreed, a smile on her face as she let herself be led away.


	5. Chapter 5

Rogue heard about Scott and Alex being caught in the storm off Hawaii after the fact, as she was considerably more interested in her first real experience of snow (however shallow and short-lived it may turn out to be) at the time to think of someone having a holiday where it was warmer. When the fog rolled in a few weeks later – the _creepy_ fog mind, not just regular fog, it was _creepy_ – she didn't hesitate to blow it away with the powers she'd absorbed from Ororo before she headed inside and locked the door. And armed the security systems.

The next day was a bit tense for Storm, and there was word of Evan being sent back to his folks in New York City because he wasn't doing so well at the Institute. Rogue didn't really get what was going on, but the fog was back and Storm didn't show for a training session she was supposed to hold with the newer kids. She heard about _that_ alright. She was the one that found them, goofing off since they were without supervision. She'd been trying to clear the fog again, but it was being more stubborn today than it was last night. Rogue couldn't help but wonder if, just maybe, she shouldn't try and talk Mr McCoy into being a teacher at the Institute and living with them to help with supervising the kids, rather than just being a phys-ed coach and chemistry teacher at the high school.

"Alright, line up!" she yelled at them all. "Storm's not here, so y'all got me instead!"

She saw their faces light up, and she just _knew_ that meant they were figuring on something fun, because she was a teenager like them rather than an adult. Well, she probably would give them something fun, but she wasn't gonna stand for them screwing around either.

"Ah'm not too fond of this fog though, so we're headin' inta the danger-room," she informed them, and herded them in. As she walked, she pulled up pieces of Logan, of Storm, and of Mr McCoy, looking for an idea of what to do in this situation.

"Alright," she declared once the doors of the danger-room closed behind them and they were all inside. "Today's lesson will be in control and restraint," she announced, and used Jean's telekinetic powers to press the right buttons up in the control room. "Volleyball, _without_ powers!" Rogue announced. "If Ah see _anyone_ usin' their powers for _any_ reason, there _will_ be consequences. Am Ah makin' mahself clear?" she asked, doing her best impersonation of a drill sergeant – though without calling on Mystique's powers to actually transform into one.

"Yes Ma'am!" the eight slightly younger mutants all chorused, made nervous by the older teen's stern expression.

Rogue gave the ball to Amara and the kids split up into teams. The ball was served, and then spiked something fierce by Roberto, which caused the ball to bounce up and hit Ray in the chin. Hard.

"No _way_ you could hit that hard without your powers!" Ray objected as he gathered his own power around his fists, where it sparked angrily.

Rogue blew the whistle.

"Ray, Ah said _no_ powers for _any_ reason," she reminded him, then rounded on Roberto. "An' Ah _also_ said this would be a lesson in _restraint_. So both a ya, off the field an' doin' push-ups until Ah say otherwise. Ah dun't _care_ who's at fault, you were _both_ disobeyin' orders. Deal with it!"

Grumbling quietly, the two boys left their teams and started their punishment.

Rogue nodded in satisfaction and summoned the ball back to her with the powers she'd absorbed from Jean, and handed the ball off to Rahne. After all, Roberto _had_ scored a point with that spike of his.

Rogue watched, pleased, as there were not further attempts at using powers in the game, or even a _lot_ of accidental use from those who didn't necessarily have perfect control over their powers – Jamie actually was the most often, poor boy multiplied just about any time he was crashed into. Rogue set him to doing ten push-ups for every extra Jamie that appeared when that happened, and set one of her _own_ multiples to take his place in the game until he'd finished his push-ups and could re-join the game. Ray and Roberto she let back on the field after they'd done a hundred push-ups each.

A successful day by her reckoning, and she went to bed satisfied. She didn't stay in bed for long though, as she and the others were woken up and bid come to the rescue. Storm had been kidnapped. Wolverine went ahead to track her down. He radioed to let them know she was at the docks.

Evan was the one to really take charge of saving his aunt, the rest of them were mostly there as support and to deal with the bad-guy's flunkies. It wasn't so bad though, and Evan _did_ save Storm. For him, the bonus to that was being given a second chance – to stay at the Institute with his friends, bring his grades up, and prove he could be reliable. After all, when it was important stuff, the boy _could_ be relied on to come through.

~oOo~

The alarm sounded, waking everybody up, and they suited up. Lance was standing there at the front door, wearing his Avalanche costume with the clear fruit-bowl over his head and all, bag over his shoulder.

"Something we can do for ya, bub?" Wolverine asked, his claws popping out with a _snick_ sound.

"Yeah," Lance answered easily, crossing his arms over his chest. "I've come to join the X-men."

Rogue groaned. "Ya couldn't a done that durin' the _day_?" she asked. "Ya had to wait until we're all asleep, an' wake us all up with the damn alarms? An' mess with the security systems on the way in?"

"I don't believe it," Scott said firmly, and his tone was more along the lines of 'I don't believe he wants to join the X-men' than 'I don't believe I got out of bed for this shit'.

"You're kidding, right?" Kitty asked, amused.

"I'm serious, I want to be an X-man," Lance answered.

"An' I wanna be the tooth fairy," Wolverine said, sheathing his claws.

Rogue laughed at that, and so did a few others, but she _did_ believe Lance. She'd absorbed him already after all, and she knew he really _did_ like Kitty, and she had a fair guess that was why he was here: trying to improve himself and impress the girl he liked. "Ya got mah vote," she said. "Jus'... no more late night stuff, alright?" she asked pointedly, even pointing at him.

"I promise," Lance answered, holding his hands up defensively. "Getting knocked out by you _hurts_. I'll pass on a repeat."

Rogue nodded, and teleported back to her room. She had newbie-training in the morning. Well, okay, _Scott_ had newbie-training in the morning, but with Lance on the team now – and she had no doubts he would be – and considering the hostility those two had going as the demi-leaders of their respective groups (yeah, she'd heard about how Ironback Survival Camp had gone)... She did _not_ trust Scott with personal instruction here.

She'd just changed back into her pyjamas when there was a knock on her door. When she opened it to find Scott standing there, still in full uniform, Rogue was _not_ surprised.

"How can you just accept him so easily?!" he demanded. "Without even waiting for the Professor!"

Rogue raised an eyebrow at the boy scout. "If you raise yer voice at me again, Ah _will_ lay you out f'r a week," she informed him flatly.

"What? At a time like this, when we all need to be more aware of the spy in our midst?!" Scott yelled.

Rogue rolled her eyes and raised her hand. Now, she was going to try and take only _energy_, not memories or powers, just _energy_. Didn't work entirely, she got _some_ memories too – just the ones of the interview with Avalanche, but she managed to not pull on Scott's powers at all. He fell, passed out, when she re-claimed her hand, at which point she floated him back to his own room away from hers.

The next morning began with flight simulations. Bobby was given pilot seat while the rest of the younger ones were in the seats behind... working on their turbulence endurance. It took Iceboy (he called himself Iceman, but Rogue wasn't about to dignify him with the idea of being grown up yet) all of ten seconds to crash.

"And yer dead," she informed him coldly as the simulator settled down. "You, an' everyone else ridin' with you, because you cared more about _showin'_ _off_ than makin' sure you reached yer destination in one piece."

Scott, she knew, wasn't that harsh on the kids. She could see it in the way Bobby's eyes went wide as her words hit him.

Rogue took his chin in her bare hand. "Let this be a lesson in _humility_ to ya," she said, absorbing his power as she looked him firmly in the eye, while herself trying to _not_ take his memories, personality, or energy. When she saw him wince, she figured she'd taken some of his energy as well as his powers. She needed to work on that still it seemed.

"Lance?" Kitty called as he stumbled out of the simulator behind Rogue, who had pushed Bobby out to face Wolverine's lecture next. "Are you alright?"

"If he isn't, Ah don't blame 'im," Rogue commented.

"Piece of cake," Lance answered, putting on a brave face and forcing down his nausea.

"Yah might want to not think about food f'r a while after Bobby was in control of the simulator," Rogue suggested kindly. "Be outside in ten."

Lance nodded and ran off for the bathroom, one hand clutched over his mouth, the other arm wrapped around his stomach.

"Bobby's that bad a pilot, huh?" Kitty asked Rogue, clipboard held in front of her as they walked along together.

"Ah wouldn't trust him to pilot a paper plane," Rogue answered frankly. "Certainly not the X-Jet."

Kitty winced and made a mark on her paper. Next was target practice outside, and Evan would be lending a hand, operating the machines from the other end of the field.

"Alright!" Rogue yelled at them all. "Some of y'all don't _have_ powers ya can throw at an incomin' object, so you'll be practising yer dodging when they come atcha. Jamie, Rahne, Sam, Ah mean you three. Lance, yer goin' last. The rest a yeh, if you miss a target yer supposed to hit, you _dodge_ it. Ah could save you from gettin' hit, but Ah won't, you gotta watch yer _own_ backs f'r this. It's a _learnin'_ exercise. Am Ah bein' clear?" she barked.

"Yes Ma'am!" the newbies answered smartly, just like they had when she'd had them all that day Storm hadn't showed up for their training. Even Lance joined in, not missing a beat.

"Good. Amara, yer up first."

She managed to hit two of them at a distance, but the other two got a bit close and she just raised her hands and ducked.

Rogue stopped the two spinning discs in the air once they were a foot past the girl. "Yah waited too long to fire the first pair, an' weren't ready for the last two quick enough," she informed the girl. "But yah dodged good, protected yer head and got out of the line of danger," she added with a slight smile as she sent the discs calmly back to where Evan was standing. He was able to pluck them out of the air and slot them in to be used again, no problem.

Bobby got hit in the back by one of the iced-up discs. He'd gotten all four of them, but he hadn't checked their trajectory, and got hit, leaving him face down in the dirt and groaning in pain.

"Ya deserved that," Rogue told him flatly before calling up the next kid.

Once everybody else had gone, it was Lance's turn. He destroyed each of the weapon-launchers, unbalanced Evan, and shattered the targets that were out there for a different exercise. All the other kids in the group were impressed, and Rogue noted that the positive attention was good for him. She _also_ noticed that he looked over to Kitty to see _her_ reaction.

"Well done, all of you," Rogue congratulated them with a slightly proud smile. "Now, back inside to run a danger-room sequence."

"Uh, what's a danger-room sequence?" Lance asked Kitty quietly as they headed back inside.

"Well, that depends," she answered. "Sometimes they're like a fake mission, sometimes they're obstacle courses. But, like, there's a _reason_ we call it the danger-room, so watch yourself."

The kids were all put through the main door, while Rogue, Kitty and Nightcrawler were up in the observation deck.

"For, like, not having done this kind of thing before, Lance is doing, like, real well, ya know?" Kitty commented.

"The rest of 'em aren't _too_ shabby either," Rogue agreed. With the run over it was out to the pool for lifesaver training. Evan, Nightcrawler, and Kitty had already agreed to be 'victims' to be rescued earlier, when Scott had asked them. Actually, so had Rogue, so she knew how Scott had _planned_ to do lifesaver training. She wasn't gonna do it that way.

"You will each be takin' a turn saving a senior X-man from 'drowning' in the pool," Rogue instructed them. "You will all perform this retrieval at least twice. The first time, you will perform this rescue however you see fit. You will then be given a critique, an' on yer second run Ah expect to see you make any necessary alterations to your rescue method. If we feel the need, we will send you out to do this a third time. When we are satisfied with your rescue method, we will then move on to how to care for a person who has just been rescued. Am Ah bein' clear?"

"Yes Ma'am!"

"Like, when did you absorb Sergeant Hawk, Rogue?" Kitty asked as Evan got into the water for the first 'rescue' of the day. "I didn't think you'd gone to Ironback."

"Ah didn't," Rogue answered quietly. "Ah absorbed a retired _army_ drill sergeant back before y'all came an' found me. Not a kiddy boot-camp drill sergeant, Ah mean a _real_ army drill sergeant."

"Like, wow," Kitty said, impressed and smirking.

"Rahne, you're first up," Rogue called. "Save the Porcupine."

The girl morphed into a wolf and dived into the water, dog-paddled out, and grabbed his uniform in her teeth, and started dragging him back towards the edge of the pool where she'd started.

Rogue sighed, slamming a hand over her face. "Rahne," she called once the girl was out of the water. "Did it occur to you that, just maybe, you'd swim faster as a _person_, than as a wolf?" she asked.

Rahne blushed and looked at her feet.

"Far as it went, it was a good rescue, but _do_ try it as a human next time, alright?" Rogue suggested kindly. "The person yer savin' might not always have a shirt ya can grab in yer teeth like that."

Rahne nodded and went to grab a towel and wait for her next turn, thinking about how she could have done it differently in the meantime.

Rogue kicked back at the end of the day, deciding it was a well-spent Sunday. She thought she'd done well with training the younger kids, and she'd managed to get all her homework done ready for the next day at school. She'd even added making ice to her repertoire of powers and been able to avoid Jean. She was fairly sure the slightly older girl would get into her for laying out the boy scout first chance she got.

~oOo~

The next set of lessons for the newbies – a special early morning session – was _going_ to be learning how to drive the X-van, after a _very_ brief tour of the Jet, which Kurt would _finally_ be finished detailing and polishing. Poor thing only had that day left of his punishment for what he'd done with Tabitha before she left for the Brotherhood house. There was, however, a hitch in Logan's plans: the van was half-way to totalled. It was even worse than Scott's car, which had been messed up the previous morning.

"Does someone, _anyone_, want to tell me what happened here?" Logan asked dangerously, once he got over his shock.

Rogue moved over to Rahne and whispered a request for permission to absorb her power.

"Uh... why?" the Scottish girl asked.

Rogue tapped her nose in a very deliberate way.

"Oh," Rahne breathed, then nodded.

Rogue placed her hand on the girl's cheek, and after a few seconds took it away again, then they _both_ turned into wolves (though, granted, Rogue probably could have done this with Mystique's powers), and stalked towards the van. Noses to the ground, the two girls circled the van, and then sniffed at each of the people present before straightening up.

"Well?" Logan asked.

"The most recent scents, apart from mud and burning, belong to _four_ of our new mutants," Rogue announced.

"Well?" Kitty asked, repeating Logan's question. "Don't keep us in suspense!"

Rogue marched straight up to Bobby. "Now, what did Ah tell you the other day after yer simulation?" she asked him in a dangerously low voice.

"Uh..." Bobby hesitated, sweating, as he tried to remember.

"Ah said: 'now yer dead'," she reminded him, and turned away from him to face Logan. "Ah think the keys need better hidin' places."

"Who kept him company?" Logan asked Rahne.  
"Jamie, Ray and Jubes," the girl answered, not looking at her friends.

Logan narrowed his eyes as the four of them. "Well that's just perfect timing," he said. "Elf's punishment duty just finished, so the four of _you_ can take over for him."

"What punishment duty?" Lance asked, curious. He'd only been at the mansion a _very_ short while, he didn't know about this bit of news.

"Wash everybody's uniforms, wax the X-Jet, and clean out the danger-room every day for a month. You, like, saw him cleaning earlier. Course, that's all _after_ Logan sessions," Kitty explained.

Logan was please to see all the kids who'd be _on_ punishment duty now wince in anticipation of pain. "I think this calls more more than just a month," the man added. "Though I sure as hell ain't lettin' them near anythin' mechanical for a _long_ while."

The kids all gulped nervously, and those innocent of the mess winced in sympathy.

~oOo~

The holidays arrived, and brought with them... options. On one hand, Rogue had her house down in Mississippi where she could get away from the snow if she wanted to, but it would be empty. On the other hand, she could stay at the mansion with Chuck and Scott – the latter of whom still hadn't totally forgiven her for laying him out for a week, though he could still be professional in training simulations. Mr McCoy would be joining them for the holiday too, to help make some upgrades to Cerebro.

Everyone else was going home for the holidays. Well, all except Logan, not that he was going to be hanging around the mansion. He was going off on his own to do 'something important' that he wasn't sharing with anyone.

Heck, even _Lance_ was going back to his home-town. Kitty was going to introduce her boyfriend to her parents, so he'd be staying with them. Of course, it was probably a good idea that Scott and Lance weren't left almost alone in the same building for the entire holiday period just because neither of them had parents to go home to.

Rogue wondered, briefly, why Scott wouldn't be going to Hawaii for the holidays to be with his brother. Heck, sometimes she wondered why the couple who fostered Alex didn't take Scott as well, but she supposed that was their business. Actually...

"So, are you gonna spend Christmas with yer brother?" Rogue asked Scott at the Christmas party.

Now, she couldn't tell if he blinked behind those shades of his, but she liked to think her suggestion caught him flat-footed from the rest of the expression that she _could_ see. She smiled as he excused himself and went to talk to Chuck about that possibility.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Kurt's voice asked from near her shoulder.

Rogue turned around quickly, and laughed to see him hanging upside-down. "Ah'm jus' wond'rin' if Ah should stay here for the holidays or go back down to Mississippi."

Kurt righted himself, setting his feet on the ground and one of his hands on Rogue's shoulder. "Whatever you choose," he said solemnly, "don't be alone for Christmas."

Rogue smiled, her heart warmed by the sentiment, and wrapped her arms around the teleporter she thought of as her little brother. He'd be going back to Germany for Christmas. He _would_ have taken her with him, but the house his parents lived in didn't really have room for a fourth person.

"Alright," she agreed. "Ah guess Ah'm stayin' here for Christmas with Mr McCoy an' the Prof."

Kurt smiled, and gave her a squeeze about the middle. "Now, I have a gift for you before I leave," he said, a smirk on his face as he took something out of his pocket. "And I fully intend to bring something back from Germany for you as well."

Rogue laughed happily and accepted the gift. "Yers is under the tree," she said. "It was a bit big f'r me ta be wantin' ta carry it 'round until Ah got a moment with ya," she explained.

Kurt nodded. "Open your gift now though," he insisted, a grin on his face.

Rogue did as she was bid and tentatively, opened the small box. "Oh mah gosh, Kurt!" Rogue cried out in surprise as she drew out the gift. "They're beautiful!"

Kurt smiled, but had to step back quickly as the other girls swarmed Rogue to see what had the ever-calm girl making exclamations like that.

"Ooh..." was the general consensus from all the other girls.

Kurt had given Rogue a pair of gloves. He figured that a girl should have more variety than just two black pairs, a brown pair (which she only ever wore in uniform), and a woolly pair for cold weather. These were white, and made of soft satin rather than the usual leather she went for. Something nice and dressy – and long. These gloves would reach all the way up to her armpit if she pulled them up the whole way, not that she had to of course.

"Like, did you pick these yourself, Kurt?" Kitty asked.

"Of course I did!" Kurt answered with a slightly indignant yelp.

"Thank you Kurt," Rogue said, pushing past all the girls, gloves still held in one hand, as she gave him a hug. "Now lemme jus' get yer gift from under the tree."

Kurt nodded and followed her over to the decorated pine tree. A moment later he was standing there with a book. Not just _any_ book though. It was a book full of vouchers to his favourite eating places in Bayville. The burger shop, the ice cream shop, the pizza shop, and the chocolate shop! It even had a few vouchers for places he'd never been to before!

"You're the _best_ Rogue!" Kurt announced happily, and danced away with his prize before he teleported out, clearly intent to stow it somewhere safe in his room so that it would be waiting for him when he got back from Germany.

Rogue shook her head fondly, and turned her attention back to the party in general.


	6. Chapter 6

The news over the holiday period was all about an angel in New York. He'd apparently saved a disabled woman from a fire, stopped a mugging in central park, and a host of other things.

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby have some entertained angels unawares," Hank said as he moved his chess piece. He and Rogue were playing in the lounge room while Chuck read his paper – a paper that had an 'angel story' on the front page.

"Shakespeare?" Chuck asked.

"The bible," Hank corrected.

"Hebrews thirteen," Rogue specified as she took her turn. "Verse two."

"Ah... indeed," Chuck commented, though there was a tone to his voice that suggested it had been a very long time since he last read the bible, and certainly couldn't remember chapter and verse like that.

"Very good Rogue," Hank praised with a genuine smile.

Rogue blushed. "Ah... back b'fore y'all fetched me here, Ah volunteered at the old people's homes. The old minister was there, his whole bible memorised, an'... he was dyin'. Ah told him about mah gift, an' he asked me to use it on him."  
"Did you?" Charles asked.

Rogue nodded. "Ah got all his memories, all his experiences, everything that was him, tucked away up in mah brain. He died the next morning," she explained. "He had a smile on his face," she added, a small, content smile appearing on her own as well.

"Although, I don't think _this_ angel is of a heavenly variety," Charles said, folding his paper.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," Hank quoted sagely as his moved his knight across the board.

"Now _that's_ Shakespeare," Rogue said with a smirk. "Hamlet."

"Not going to quote act, scene and verse?" Hank teased with a smile.

Rogue shook her head. "Don't have it memorised," she countered easily, as she shifted her queen a few squares over.

"What I'm saying," Chuck ploughed on, "is that if Cerebro weren't still being repaired, we would certainly have gotten a reading on this 'angel' by now. But I fear his activities will alert the public to the existence of mutants."

"It's hardly bad press," Rogue pointed out. "Here he is, a good Samaritan with gorgeous white wings, not doin' anythin' wrong and shy of the spotlight."

"You have a point Rogue," Charles allowed. "All the same, I think someone should go to the city. Perhaps we could... recruit him," he suggested.

"New York at Christmas time?" Rogue asked, a huge smile blossoming on her features. "I'll go!"

"Alright," Charles agreed. "Hank, can you compile a list of sightings? Addresses and the like? It would give Rogue somewhere to start when she get there."

Hank nodded, a smile on his face.

Rogue left the next morning.

She visited the people he'd saved, helped, come to the rescue of, managed to get a better description of him than just 'he had the most beautiful white wings' with a little help from Jean and Chuck's telepathic powers, and then she started checking out the churches near where the incidents had happened. It was a lot of churches, but eventually she got lucky.

She couldn't see the guy's wings, but the description matched pretty much everything else, and really, a trench coat that big would probably do a damn good job of hiding them. Quietly, she sat down on the pew beside him.

"It's a nice church," she said softly.

"It is," the man agreed.

"Benches are a bit uncomf'ter'ble though," she commented.

The man chuckled.

"Mus' be even worse f'r you," Rogue said quietly. "Havin' ta sit on yer wings."

She heard the man breathe in sharply, and when she checked out of the corner of her eye, he was staring at her. She smiled a little and stood up.

"C'mon, A'll buy you a hot chocolate 'r somethin', an' we can talk a bit," she suggested, holding a gloved hand out to him.

"Alright," he agreed, putting his hand into hers. "I know the perfect place."

"You do great work," Rogue said as the walked along the snow-frosted streets. "Really. Ah wanted to get that out there straight away."

"Thank you," he answered with a small smile. "I'm Warren."

"Oh, Rogue, pleased t' meecha," she said, and blushed at having forgotten to introduce herself.

"Well, Miss Rogue, this is the place," Warren said, indicating a little diner with an array of Christmas lights around every window. "You didn't come and find me just to say you admired what I was doing though, did you?" Warren asked as they sat down.

Rogue shook her head. "Afraid not," she agreed. "Ah live at a place called Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters," she started. "It's a place where people who are a bit more different than usual can go to be safe. Chuck, er, Professor Charles Xavier, the guy who owns and runs the place, he's fairly sure the rest of the world ain't ready to accept people who are as different as..."

"As me," Warren finished.

"Pretty much," Rogue agreed. "Ah don't know if it'll ever be ready," she admitted. "Diff'rent scares people, always has, probably always will. Yer doin' okay f'r now cause people _like_ the idea of an angel at Christmas time."

Warren nodded in understanding. "I should, maybe, tone it down?" he suggested.

Rogue shrugged. "It's up to you really," she admitted. "Ah know Chuck is worried you'll 'expose the existence of mutants', as he put it, an' Ah _know_ he'd rather that not happen any time soon. He's been findin' us kids, helpin' us get control of our powers, helpin' us hide from bein' found out and persecuted 'r exploited..."

Warren reached out a hand and laid it over Rogue's. "I understand," he said softly.

Rogue smiled. "He also invites you to visit any time you like," she said. "Talk, meet the kids, though at the moment they've all gone home f'r the holidays..."

"Except you?" Warren asked astutely, giving a smile to the waitress as she set their hot drinks in front of them.

"Well, mah home's kinda empty, me bein' an orphan an' all," Rogue answered with a shrug and a nod of gratitude to the waitress as well.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Rogue said, shaking her head. "It ain't yer fault. Besides, if Ah'd gone home, Ah wouldn't a got to meet you."

Warren smiled, glad he hadn't upset the young lady. "May I ask," he said, going for a change of subject. "What is your gift? You know about my wings..."

"When Ah touch people, I can absorb their memories, their energy, their personalities if Ah want – which mostly Ah don't, Ah been workin' hard to not absorb those, heck, to not absorb _anythin'_ if Ah don't want to, but it's hard, an' Ah still haven't managed it completely... An' if Ah touch a person with gifts, like us, then I gain their powers too, which Ah can use as Ah want," Rogue explained.

Warren smiled. "So if you touched me...?"

"Ah'd be _able_ to grow wings like yours an' fly, an' whatever else that comes with that. Because it's not actually _mah_ gift though, Ah'd have to will somethin' ta happen if Ah want to use those borrowed gifts. One guy at the Institute, his name's Kurt, he's got blue fur all over, pointed ears an' a tail, fangs, an' he's a teleporter. Ah can use his ability to teleport, cause Ah absorbed it back when we met, but Ah don't have to sprout blue fur an' a tail to use it," Rogue explained.

Warren nodded and hunched over his hot chocolate, apparently thinking. Then he reached over to Rogue's hands and peeled off her gloves, before taking off his own.

"Merry Christmas," he said softly as he took her bare hand in his.  
"Merry Christmas," she agreed, even as she concentrated her powers to only take Warren's mutation – and tried to make sure the only memories she took were ones that that pertained to his mutation. She didn't want to hurt herself the first time she tried those wings out after all.

~oOo~

Jean had vanished. Not only had she vanished, but she'd apparently taken up criminal activities, and was wearing her X-men uniform while performing them. It was all generally not good, and not like Jean either for that matter. Rogue and Jamie were assigned lookout for in case she came back to the mansion, as they were both able to multiply and could rest and keep watch at the same time – and Jamie was to alert Rogue immediately if he crossed Jean's path. Which he did.

That is to say, little Jamie _did_ find Jean, and he _did_ manage to contact Rogue before she knocked him out with her psychic powers. Later, when he was awake again, the kid explained that he had enough time to call for help because Jean had been pre-occupied with Scott a bit further down the hall and hadn't spotted him.

Rogue came up behind Jean and clasped her hand over Red's face, and focused specifically on draining energy, something she'd only once before tried to deliberately take, excluding all else – that time she'd laid out Scott for a week. She was more successful this time at not _draining_ memories from Jean. On the other hand, Rogue also slammed herself into Jean's mind with Jean's own powers, searching for the reason Jean was doing these things.

She found it alright. Another psychic. A powerful one. One who took that opportunity to attempt seizing control of _her_ mind. The guy hadn't counted on meeting someone – however remotely – who had experience with having people in her head, and making sure that _she_ was still the one in control. Of course, her fight was aided by the bonuses of having both Chuck's powers _and_ Red's in her head and at her disposal as well, making it a three-on-one fight. Still, it took her a couple of minutes to get the bastard out, and she was uncomfortably aware that _he_ had backup as well, but he couldn't get that backup to attack her from this distance.

Then she was charging down the halls, intent on catching the guy.

She and Red might not have been all buddy-buddy, but _no one_ was gonna get away with turning her house-mates into puppets!

"Rogue!" Chuck called as she sprinted past him. "Where are you going?"

"The carnival!" she answered. "To beat the shit outta Mesmiro! Yer _welcome_ ta come an' bring backup!"

A fair crew of the X-men reached the hangar, suited up and ready for action, by the time Rogue had finished the pre-flight systems checks on the Blackbird. Chuck was coming too, and for this, Rogue was glad to have him along.

"In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war," Rogue said quietly as she guided the chopper out of the hangar and into the skies.

"Run that by me again?" Logan asked softly as he strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat.

"Two Samuel, chapter eleven verse one," Rogue answered. "First half of it anyway. Seemed appropriate."

When they landed at the circus, there wasn't a whole lot for Wolverine, Kitty, Evan or Kurt to do. It was a battle of psychics. Chuck had a fair chunk of Mesmiro's attention, sitting there in his wheelchair, glaring and pummelling the man with psychic blasts. Rogue had a slightly different approach. She was glaring at the man too, but she was stalking up to him, gloves off, and with every bit of her mind, every personality she'd absorbed and shut away so it didn't affect her, all of them screaming to get a hold of this piece of trash and rip him to pieces. She reached him, and lay her hands both on his bald, ugly, tattooed face, and she _pulled_.

She dragged his energy from him, and she did it harshly. She wrenched his powers from his hold for as long as she held onto him, taking control so that he could no longer resist the attacks coming from Chuck. She stripped out his memories, copying them all, storing them away to be dissected later. It was violent, and it was – for him – very painful. Rogue made no effort to ease that pain. She sensed the presence of another mind, one that had been giving this man his orders. She sneered at it's attempts to attach itself to her, like some kind of malicious leech. With her mind, she released Mr McCoy's beast, Sabertooth, and the Wolverine at its most feral upon this entity, all growling and claws and teeth and threatened rage.

The _other_ backed away, and Mesmiro stopped breathing.

Dispassionately, Rogue called upon Mystique's powers to re-shape herself into the likeness of Wolverine and un-sheath just one claw. One claw that she used to behead the man with.

"Rogue!"

She ignored them all – even Kurt and Logan – as she walked through the rain back to where she'd landed the Blackbird. Rogue didn't head for the pilot's chair this time. She moved to the back of the chopper and strapped herself in. She didn't talk to anyone on the flight back to the Institute, didn't react to anybody as she walked the halls back to her room, and just phased through everybody who tried to physically stop her and try to talk to them. She even shut out Chuck when he tried to reach her via telepathy.

The next day was a school day, and Rogue _did_ leave her room, but she still didn't really talk with anyone. Just did her work, answered when called upon, and silently returned to the Institute. Rogue remained that silent until the day Forge showed up at the front door with a brand new idea for a gizmo (already half-made) and a grin to split his face in two.

When he gave the explanation of what his new gizmo would do, he achieved what no one else since the mess with Mesmiro had done: he got Rogue talking again.

"Y'all are _not_ attachin' experimental technology to _mah_ little brother," she said firmly.

Kurt damn near tackled her, he was so happy to hear her talking again. He wasn't in Rogue's grade, so he hadn't even gotten to hear her almost robotic answers to teacher's questions. "You're back!" he cried, his joy practically bubbling over as he wrapped his arms around her and started to swing her around. "I was so worried about you!"

Some of the tension in Logan's frame fell away, and everybody else breathed a sigh of relief, each happily anticipating things getting back to semi-normal around the place.

"What did I miss?" Forge asked, confused.

"Ah absorbed a psycho psychic 'til he died," Rogue answered flatly, even though she was still being swung around by an ecstatic Kurt. "It was _not_ fun, Ah can tell you that." Not that she was going to tell anyone, but Mesmiro wasn't the _first_ psycho psychic she'd done that to. Jean was such a victim of her skin as well, though Rogue had expended effort to bring Red back, whereas she'd made absolutely sure that Mesmiro would _not_ be. It had made things... crowded in her head for a while. To say the least.

"Riiiight," Forge agreed, then shook it off. "So you'll be testing it?" he asked, dismissing the bad stuff in his eagerness to test his new gizmo.

Rogue nodded.

"Great!" Forge said with a grin. "I haven't _quite_ finished it yet, but..."

Rogue's arm turned into the same build-a-matron as Forge's about a half-beat after he did his, and she bent over the gizmo with him.

"Like, sometimes, I forget how many different powers Rogue's, like, absorbed," Kitty commented as she – and everyone else – watched the two with the techno-hands work.

It actually took all that day and a fair bit of the night for the gizmo to be finished, along with recording equipment – to see what the alternate dimension was like – as well as breathing equipment and safety checks, because with the sulphurous smoke that was left behind with each 'port, it was a fair guess that the atmosphere could be toxic.

Rogue was eventually geared up and ready to go, the systems had all been checked, and the countdown to 'port began with all the X-men standing by as moral support and curious bystanders. She was to aim for Forge's old lab, as it was outside of the two-mile limit and unlikely to be populated.

"Confirmed," Rogue said into her communicator. "Ah'm in Forge's lab. The ride was smooth an' the alternate dimension Ah travelled through was _not_ a place Ah'd recommend f'r holidayin' in."

"Very good Rogue," Chuck answered through the device. "Come home now, and we can start analysing the data from the equipment."

"Return trip will be slowed down too?" Rogue asked.

"Should be," Forge's voice answered. "Check the chronometer."

"Still reads three seconds," Rogue confirmed. "Ah guess Ah'll be collectin' more data on the return trip. See y'all soon."

~oOo~

"So, like, are you asking anyone to the girls dance?" Kitty asked excitedly as they walked up to the school building, glad to have Rogue back to talking again and already taking advantage.

"Have you asked Lance yet?" Rogue countered.

Kitty blushed, but nodded silently.

Rogue turned to Jean, who had been walking along with them. "What about you, asked the boy scout?"

"His name is Scott," Jean reprimanded, a smile on her lips. "And you know it."  
"But have you _asked_ him yet?" Kitty pressed.

Jean giggled. "Yes," she answered. "But hey! _You_ didn't answer, Rogue! Who are _you_ going to ask to the dance?"

Rogue raised an eyebrow at the other two girls. "Ah ain't got perfect control yet," she pointed out.

"Oh, right," Kitty said, shoulders sagging. "The 'no touching thing'... but you could cover up, right?"

"Covered up semi-formal in _this_ weather?" Rogue asked, amused but sceptical as she waved an arm to indicate the fine, _warm_ weather outside, even as they headed in. "Besides, ain't nobody 'round here Ah'd want to ask."

"What, not even Kurt?" Jean asked, curiously as they turned down a hallway.

Kitty shuddered. "Like, _ew_!" she said. "Jean, you _know_ they're like brother and sister to each other! Would _you_ go to a school dance with your brother?"

"Well, I don't have a brother," Jean stammered, "but I see your point," she conceded when Kitty glared at her for hanging on technicalities.

"But seriously Rogue, I mean, like, _no one_?" Kitty asked.

Rogue shook her head. "Besides, Ah figure there's gonna be more tests with Forge's new gizmo after school, so Ah'll be busy anyway."

"Ooh," Kitty said, a grin on her face like a cat that ate the canary. "You'd rather spend time with _Forge_ then?"

Rogue released a disgusted sigh. Not that she disliked Forge particularly, but he wasn't really her type and she was starting to get sick of talking about the dance. "Not what Ah was gettin' at," she quipped at the younger teen.

"Alright, alright!" Kitty said, backing up. "I'll stop if you answer just _one_ question," she compromised, holding up a single digit and waving it in front of Rogue's face. "If you _could_ go with anyone, anyone at all, and, like, didn't have to worry about the 'no touching thing', who, like, _would_ you ask to the dance?"

Rogue stopped to think about it, opening her locker silently at the same time. "Probably Logan," she admitted as she closed her locker door.

"Mr Logan?" Kitty yelped.

"Logan?" Jean asked at the same time, eyes wide.

Rogue shrugged. "Y'all asked," she pointed out. "Logan an' Ah get on alright, an' neither of us are all that big on parties 'r dancin'. It wouldn't be a date 'r anythin'."

When they got back to the Institute after school, Chuck, Forge and Logan had finished analysing the data that Rogue had collected that morning. It wasn't exactly pretty stuff.

"Are those _teeth_?" Kurt asked as he stared at the screen. It had a frozen image from the video-feed that had been recorded while Rogue was in the alternate dimension.

Rogue leaned in to get a closer look, not that she really needed it considering she was up front and watching it right beside him. "Yup," she answered at last.

"Of course, this raises new concerns," Chuck said from his wheelchair. "We don't know if these creatures are hostile. We need to run a few more tests."

"What?!" Kurt yelped. "You want Rogue or me to go back _in there_? With _that_? No way!"

"Hey calm down," Forge said, a hand on Kurt's shoulder. "You've been teleporting all your life and nothing's happened. The only reason we even saw this thing is because my gizmo slowed the process down," he pointed out.

"Yeah, thanks a lot for the nightmares," Kurt said, then turned to Rogue. "Please tell me you're _not_ going back in there," he begged.

"Ah promise, yer not goin' in there," Rogue answered with a small smile.

"Thank you," Kurt said, with a relieved smile. "Wait..."

More than just a few people laughed.

"So there's a few critters, big deal," Logan said. "Look, whichever of ya straps the machine on for the next run, I'm goin' with ya, just in case."

Once again, Rogue was geared up in readiness for the trip, but this time, Logan had a breathing mask on as well, and a cable linked them together as a precaution. Forge adjusted the timer so they'd be there longer before re-appearing, so they'd have a greater opportunity for gathering data.

"Like, check out the decorations for the dance while you're there," Kitty suggested with a smile as she waved goodbye and the count-down to teleport happened.

Rogue didn't answer as Logan's hand rested on her shoulder and she teleported them both to Forge's lab behind the school. She wasn't going to the dance, so what did she care what the decorations looked like?

"Definitely teeth," Rogue commented when they appeared in the other dimension – and a whole pack of the creatures were waiting for them.

"I'd call this a hostile environment," Logan added sardonically. He popped his claws out, ready for the attack he was fairly sure the creatures would launch. They weren't exactly a friendly little welcome party after all.

"Yeah," Rogue agreed, and called up Bobby's power so she could fire ice at these critters. It was a hot place and the creatures looked kinda lizard-like. Cold should, theoretically, slow them down. Then again, being turned into ice sculptures _did_ slow _most_ things down.

"Fun ride?" Rogue asked when they appeared in Forge's lab at last. "Or shall we put the counter back to just a second 'r two f'r the return trip?"

Logan chuckled. "Ya got guts, Stripes," he praised. "And great aim. If yer up to it, let's hop back on that roller-coaster and head home."

Rogue nodded and held out her hand for the man to take. He did, and they headed back into the alternate dimension for the ride back to the Institute. Their uniforms were a bit torn up after the two trips, but neither of them were bleeding. Then again, that wasn't such a surprise considering Logan's healing factor – which Rogue had absorbed a while ago and could use when she needed to as well.

"Are you alright?" Kurt asked as he ran up to them, worry written all over his furry blue face.

"We're fine," Logan answered gruffly as he removed his breathing pack and the cable that had kept the two of them joined together.

"So what are the decorations like?" Kitty asked.

"Didn't look," Rogue answered while she pulled the gizmo off her chest and the breathing mask off her face. "We went to Forge's lab, not the gym."

"Aww," Kitty whined, shoulders dropping.

"You'll see 'em in an hour anyway half-pint," Logan pointed out.

"One hour?!" Kitty yelped. "I gotta get ready!" she yelled and ran for – and through – the door, not waiting for it to open to let her through.

She wasn't the only one either. Jean wasn't far behind, and even the boys were hurrying off to get a shower and freshen up. Even Kurt had a date – a girl in his math class had asked him out. No one was quite sure how that would go, but Rogue had checked out the girl in question and was hopeful, not certain, but certainly hopeful.

"Notice you're not hurryin' off like the rest of 'em," Logan said quietly to Rogue.

"Don't need to," she answered. "Ah'm not goin' t' the dance."

"Rogue?" Charles asked, having heard the comment.

She shrugged. "No one Ah want to go with," she explained. "An' Ah ain't crazy 'bout the idea of jus' hangin' 'round the gym watchin' other people dance."

"Still," Chuck pressed, politely of course, but he _was_ pressing it. "You should go out and socialise with people your own age."

"Go to a dance with no date, and talk to people Ah don't like... Is that what yer sayin' Ah should do?" Rogue asked coldly before she turned on the ball of her foot and marched out.

"Rogue -" Charles called after her, reaching out from his wheelchair.

"Leave the kid alone Chuck," Logan advised quietly as Rogue vanished through the door. "All the good intentions in the world won't give you the right to make other people's choices for them."

A good two hours later, the three of them had finished analysing what data Rogue had collected, and were nearly finished packing up the equipment when Forge spotted something down on the floor of the danger room. It was one of the creatures from the dimension Rogue and Kurt teleported through. Looked like they had a little _more_ cleaning up to do than they'd originally anticipated.


	7. Chapter 7

When Charles arrived at the institution that held Wanda Maximoff, the security guard at the door stuttered and backed away in shock before calling his co-worker.

The man scowled to see Charles in his wheelchair at the door.

"We've either got a fake at our door, or in with the Maximoff girl right now," the man stated.

Charles blinked in shock, and his mouth hung open in indelicate surprise.

"The latter," a voice – Charles' voice – said from behind the guards. "Not that it matters any more," he added as he rolled into view on his chair. A chair that Charles recognised as his _spare_ wheelchair. "Wanda has been cleared for release."

The girl in question, dark hair hanging in her face and a broken straitjacket on her torso, stood calmly beside the Charles that had just admitted to being an imposter, a small smile on her face.

"If you're not Professor Xavier, then who are you?" demanded the security guard, turning from the man outside the door to the one beside their most high-security patient.

"Mah name's Rogue," the imposter admitted, voice changing from that of an adult, cultured man to that of a young, southern belle. Then the rest of the body changed to match, revealing the girl Charles sometimes felt he had the most trouble with in his Institute. Rogue could be harder to deal with some days than Wanda.

And from the way Wanda happily leant her face against Rogue's neck, Charles guessed that he'd now have to deal with a Rogue that had Wanda's powers as well.

"Rogue, how long have you been here?" Charles asked, as politely as he could and keeping all concern for his likely future headache to himself.

"Couple a hours," Rogue answered with a shrug. "Came in as you, changed back to me once the staff here left me an' Wanda alone."

"It was nice," Wanda spoke up softly. "Having a girl to talk to for once," she explained, wrapping her still-covered arms around one of Rogue's arms. "Rogue told me my father was dead, too," she added.

Chuck gasped, and looked over at Rogue in surprise.

Rogue shrugged. "You didn't ask," she said in response to his unasked question. "Ah been meanin' ta pay a visit ta Wanda here f'r a while, but Ah kept gettin' distracted. Homework, danger-room sessions, mindin' the new kids 'round the place, dealin' with mah _own_ head..." Rogue shrugged. "Jus' finally got around to it."

Charles sighed in his seat and laced his fingers together. "I believe Kitty said it best, Rogue," he said. "You really are the best at saving the day."

Rogue blushed and looked at her feet. "Nah," she denied. "Ah jus' really know people. Not hard with the number Ah've absorbed since Ah got mah powers."

"Well, let's all head back to the Institute," Charles said with another sigh. "You too Wanda. It's clear to me that you really _are_ ready."

Wanda smiled like a kid at Christmas to hear that.

~oOo~

Rogue didn't know why the kids had asked for _her_ to be one of their chaperones for the cruise. She really, honestly didn't. She _did_ know it ticked off Scott a bit though. He and Jean were going on the cruise as well, but while they'd be generally responsible, they wouldn't be the ones the kids would be reporting to if they had – or caused – a problem. No, that would be Rogue and Storm – and Rogue had wanted to stay home.

No one had quite factored in just how ill Amara felt when away from land for long when the cruise was planned though. Tabitha, who was along for the ride and sharing Amara's cabin on the ship, was the one to alert Rogue to the problem.

"She needs landfall," Rogue relayed to Storm. "An' she needs it fast."

Storm nodded and checked in with the captain about weighing anchor at the nearest island – something it turned out the cruise-liner was going to have to do anyway due to inclement weather.

"Put on your bathing suit an' somethin' cool," Rogue instructed from the door of Amara's cabin, a smile on her face. "You have been awarded shore-leave."

"Oh thank God," Amara said, and moved as fast as she could to follow those orders.

"Tabitha," Rogue said, turning to the other girl in the room. "You find anyone else who wants to get off this boat and have them present themselves here in no more than ten minutes. Ah'll let Storm know who's comin' once Ah've got a head-count."

"I'm on it!" the perky blonde said with a grin and a salute before she rushed out the door. "Oh, and Rogue?" she said, turning briefly. "Thanks for this."

Rogue waved the girl off.

"Really Rogue," Amara said as she pulled on her sandals. "I know tropical heat isn't your favourite, what with having to keep covered up, so... Thank you. A lot."

Rogue smiled at the younger girl. "Yer welcome," she answered.

"Scott and Jean are nowhere to be found," Tabitha said when she reported back. "Jamie's more interested in the buffet lunch, and Bobby's..."

"Still confined to quarters because of the iceberg incident," Rogue finished. She and Storm had _not_ been impressed with the boy's behaviour. Though they _could_ appreciate the more artistic of his sculptures, there was still the matter of _time and place_.

Everyone else was present though, and Kurt looked almost as eager to get off the boat and onto the island as Amara, though substituting the somewhat-ill pallor that Amara was sporting for a face-splitting grin.

Rogue sent a mental message to Storm, letting her know who was going with her to the island, and took hold of Amara and Tabitha while Kurt grabbed Kitty, then they 'ported off the ship and onto dry land. Amara was back to the pink of health in the time it took Tabby to buy a straw hat and the rest of them to walk up to the natural hot-springs. Even Rogue stripped down to enjoy the hot water, though she carefully kept her distance from Kurt, Kitty, Tabitha and Amara who were also enjoying the water.

Well, they were enjoying the water until the temperature suddenly shot up and they had to scramble to get out before they were boiled alive. Amara was last out, and she came out with her powers active.

"We have to get out of here!" she exclaimed when she surfaced.

Rogue pulled up Bobby's power – frankly, the ice would be a welcome change after that heat – and made them a slide to take them down the mountainside. The people in the small down at the base of the volcano were panicking, running. There were tremors shaking the whole place, causing wooden structures to fall. A few boulders were shaken loose from the mountainside as well, and would have caused some serious trouble if not for a familiar looking lazer blast, or one of the large rocks just suddenly stopping in mid-air and moving back to rest against the side of the volcano.

Rogue used more of Bobby's power to create ice pillars that would reinforce structures long enough for people to get out. Kitty pulled people out of already collapsed market stalls. Kurt nabbed a couple out of the air when he saw them fall from their balcony on the top floor of a hotel. Tabitha blasted open stuck doors and Amara helped her get the trapped people out.

Thankfully, the shaking didn't last long.

"It... stopped," Jean commented.

"For now," Amara answered.

"Ya know, when Tabitha tol' me she couldn't find you two on the ship, Ah thought y'all had jus' found somewhere t' be alone t'gether," Rogue commented. "Ah didn't think you'd jumped ship without tellin' Storm 'r me."

Scott and Jean both laughed nervously.

Then the whispers reached them, and the group noticed the natives all gathering around them and staring.

"W-we don't want any trouble," Scott said, raising his hands defensively, even as he tried to stand between their group and as many of the islanders as possible. Kinda hard when they were surrounded. "So... We, we'll just leave and..."

But he was drowned out by cheering.

"What?" Scott asked, confused.

"We're _heroes_, boy scout," Rogue said as she pulled on a loose long-sleeved shirt and wrapped a sarong around her waist. "The people here are of the culture that sees extraordinary gifts as blessings to the people, not something to be feared and dissected under a microscope."

As though to prove her point, the villages started lifting them onto their shoulders as they cheered, and a party was called to be had that evening to celebrate their saviours. In the mean time, they helped out around the place. Rebuilding, catching fish for the party that night, and entertaining the kids.

"Rogue," Amara said quietly as they sat together at their table at the party that evening. "I... I think it was my fault..."

Rogue blinked in surprise, and offered a bare hand to the girl. "Ah'm fairly sure the _fault_ was in the ground," she offered with weak humour. "But tell me anyway."

"In the hot spring," Amara began, and set her own hand into Rogue's. "There was a fissure, and when I touched it, I seemed to... awaken it somehow."

Just then, a fresh rumble from the volcano sounded out.

"Then let's you an' me go put it back to sleep," Rogue suggested. "Ev'ryone else, stay alert."

The group nodded solemnly, and Rogue teleported herself and Amara up to the crater.

Amara let go of Rogue's hand and activated her power. Rogue, right along side her, called up that same power, having just absorbed it and having it fresh in her system. For now, she'd just watch, supervise as the girl followed her instincts. The first geyser of molten rock erupted as they stood there. Neither girl flinched.

Amara stretched out her arms and slammed her hands together in front of her before bringing them back to her sides. Her stance was strong, and her expression resolute. Rogue had to admire the girl in that moment. Especially when the molten rock started to perform to the girl's will – falling back into the crater, raising up and spinning as orbs before falling in again, two thin columns rising and falling as Amara, as _Magma_ breathed.

Then the ledge she was standing on gave way beneath her. Rather than moving back, trying to find a solid footing again as Rogue had expected her to, Amara dived into the very heart of the volcano.

"This Ah gotta see," Rogue decided, and dived in after her temporary charge.

Rogue followed Amara down, down, down... ultimately reaching a fissure in what Rogue could only suppose to be the magma chamber. They were in the heart of the volcano, and Amara was... doing something that was calming it down. Rogue could feel what she was doing, could feel it in the volcano all around them, could feel it in her own body, like they were both a part of the volcano itself. She grinned and let herself exalt in the feeling until Amara noticed her.

Rogue held out her hand and they swam upwards together.

The top had crusted over while they were down there, and they punched through with controlled jets of lava that carried them to the rim of the crater.

"That was..." Amara said, her eyes bright and a huge smile on her face.

"Ah know," Rogue agreed with a smile of her own. "You remember that feelin'," she instructed gently. "Now, how's about we go back down there an' re-join the party?"

Amara laughed, and nodded.

~oOo~

Rogue knew that Logan had been 'abducted' from training the younger crew by some people he used to work for. This in turn made her the tiniest bit tense about the sound of things – like walls – getting smashed within the mansion. After all, most of that kind of smashing was limited to outside or the danger-room. Rogue tugged on a light jacket but stuffed her gloves into her pocket as she exited her room, rather than putting them on or leaving them behind.

Following the noise, it didn't take her long to find Scott and Ray fighting... a little girl. If Rogue wasn't used to dealing with super-powered kids, she wouldn't have believed it. Ray and Scott were being thrashed by a girl who – _at most_ – was only fourteen years old. A kid! A kid with some impressive moves... and two claws just like Logan's coming out of her hands.

It was probably inappropriate. Scratch that, it was _definitely_ inappropriate, but Rogue couldn't help laughing. "You are _so_ gonna kick butt in danger-room sessions if you decide to stick around kid," she said. "Heck, ya could probably take over from Logan an' _teach_ 'em."

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say however, as it drew the angry child's attention to Rogue.

Claws out, the girl rushed at the older teen.

"Whoa!" Rogue exclaimed, and quickly called up Jean's telekinetic powers to halt the girl, lifting her off the ground a bit and holding her still so that she wasn't going anywhere. "Okay, first off, _don't_ surprise me like that," she said sternly, wagging a finger at the girl.

"And second?" the girl asked, growling as best she could in her young – and not at all designed for growling in – voice.

"Yah can either tell me why you're here, or Ah can learn a diff'rent way," Rogue answered calmly.

The girl clenched her teeth, even bared them at Rogue like an angry, caged animal that couldn't get close enough to bite.

"Diff'rent way it is," Rogue said, just a bit sadly, and raised a hand to lay it on the girl's forehead – away from teeth that _would_ try and bite at her. A few seconds of contact later and Rogue rushed to pull her gloves on and the girl into a hug.

"What are you doing?" the girl demanded harshly, even as her body shook and her eyes became glassy with held-back tears.

"Ah can't take yer memories away," Rogue said quietly. "An' honestly, Ah don't know that Ah would even if Ah could, because _not_ knowin' what happened t' you is even worse," she forced a chuckle. "Logan could tell you that," she added in dry honesty. "But Ah _do_ know that they shouldn' a done that to ya. It was wrong, an twisted, an' they _should_ be made to pay f'r what they did."

Rogue used her gloved hand to tilt the girl's chin up so she could look her in the eye.

"Ah'll help, if you'll let me. Ah'm pretty sure _ev'ryone_ here would, if ya asked," she said.

"I know you'd have _my_ backing," a deep voice said from behind Rogue.

Rogue twisted around to see, to confirm. "Logan!" she greeted happily.

"Hey Stripes," Logan returned as he stepped into the room. "And you must be the kid I just found out about," he said, looking at the girl still being held in Rogue's embrace. "I'm sorry," he told her, laying a hand on top of her head. "If I'd known about you sooner, I'd a been right there to bust you out years ago."

"We both know what you've been through, sugar," Rogue assured the girl. "Logan 'cause he's lived it too. Me 'cause Ah've absorbed _his_ memories of when it happened to him, an' _your_ memories of it bein' done t' you."

"So you've been tortured twice and come out of it without even the _very_ few benefits," the girl commented darkly, and the tears finally started to fall.

Rogue didn't answer, just silently held and rocked the girl.

"We ain't got long before Shield shows up lookin' for 'er," Logan said quietly once she'd fallen asleep in Rogue's hold – on her feet and everything.

"Ah'll put 'er t' bed, then do mah Chuck impersonation an' we can get 'em ta back off," Rogue suggested.

Logan nodded in agreement and opened doors for Rogue to float the girl through.

"She wants revenge Logan," Rogue said as they left the girl behind in a soft bed with a teddy bear tucked under one arm. "She came here 'cause she thought you had somethin' to do with it all, an' she wants to _destroy_ Hydra."

"Don't blame the kid," Logan answered. "And I'll help her if I can," he added.

Rogue nodded and pulled the professor's wheelchair upright – Logan set him in a couch for now – and the two of them headed for the front door. Rogue changed into Chuck before they reached it, settled herself into the chair, and rolled it towards the doors as Logan pushed them open.

Rogue did her impersonation of the great pacifist, Logan threatened politely, and they got what they wanted from Shield without _too_ much of a fuss.

When they went back to check on the girl, they were relieved to see her still asleep. Both of them had half-feared she'd run when they weren't looking. Both of them stayed by her bed all night, holding vigil.

"Thanks for stayin' up, Stripes," Logan said softly as the night sky began to turn grey with pre-dawn light.

Rogue shrugged. "You two're family, or close to it, an' Ah think of you as mah family already, which makes her family too," Rogue said. "Family stick by each other," she explained with a small smile.

Logan smiled back.

~oOo~

Evan had found an underground mutant group, sort of... the Morlocks had found him more than the other way around... and he'd gone to join them living in the sewers when his mutation acted up and got out of his control – thanks to an _energy drink_ of all things. Rogue honestly couldn't think why he didn't ask for an inducer like Kurt and Mr McCoy though, but that was his choice of course. It was similarly the choice of every kid at the Institute to _never_ drink Power 8. Lance even went and warned his old friends at the Brotherhood house about the stuff, so they avoided it too.

Some of the kids – Rogue included – took it in turns to do some shopping on behalf of the Morlocks. They couldn't exactly go out and do it for themselves. Well, they _could_ have, but that would mean wearing an image inducer like Kurt's, and for whatever reason, not _one_ of them wanted to. Not even for the half-hour or so it would take to walk into a shop and buy some food.

It was Rogue's turn at the moment, and she was loading up the basket with fresh fruit and a whole lot of non-perishable type things. Fruit to keep away sickness, and non-perishables so that they could keep eating for a while until they got the next load of supplies from when it would be the next person's turn to drop off food.

"Freaky little kid," Rogue heard someone sneer behind her.

She turned sharply, angrily. "Ah know Ah'm not _perky_, but that dun't give you the right so say that sort of thing!" she snapped.

"Huh? Oh, not you miss," the man said, backing away, his hands up in a placating gesture. "I meant _that_ kid," he said, pointing to a little boy, no more than ten.

"Ya ain't got no right ta say things like that about little kids either," she snarled, then walked past the man to the little boy and his mother. "Well aren't you a cutie," she said with a gentle smile on her face. "You look like you could use a bit more sun though," she added in a teasing voice as her smile spread a little wider. "Not that Ah'm one to talk, though, huh kid?" she added.

The boy smiled a little at her, and Rogue counted that an achievement. She wasn't much of a people-person generally, but she _did_ like little kids. In a moment of curiosity, Rogue pulled on Irene's power and looked at the pathways and probabilities of this little boy's life. It was certainly interesting...

"Dorian is very sick," his mother informed Rogue hesitantly. "Thank you for standing up for him," she added.

Rogue smiled at the woman, and straightened up. "Mah name's Rogue," she offered, extending a gloved hand to the woman. "Jus' Rogue."

"Alice Leech," the woman answered, placing her hand in Rogue's. "Pleased to meet you. You, ah, seem to be doing quite a bit of shopping there," she observed, noting the contents of Rogue's basket.

Rogue chuckled. "It ain't all f'r me," she answered. "Ah got some friends who really _can't_ go out at all, so me an' some a the people Ah live with take turns doin' their shoppin' for 'em."

"That's very thoughtful of you," Alice said, smiling a little.

"Nah," Rogue denied with a smile and a shake of her head. "Jus'... the right thing to do."

Together, the three of them finished filling their baskets and headed for the counter to pay. When they left the store, Rogue had learned that Dorian got terrible headaches, Alice was a single mother, and that she was _very_ protective of her little boy. In exchange, she'd told the Leeches about how she lived at the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters, which was run by Professor Xavier himself.

"Hey, how about this?" Rogue suggested as they left the store. "Ah'll talk to the Professor when Ah get back to the Institute, ask 'im if you an' Dorian couldn't come an' visit. It's not a long way f'r you to go, but it's got a lot more open space an' fresh air than in the middle of Bayville, an' Ah'm sure the other guys around the place would all keep an eye on Dorian while he gets to play outside f'r a while," she offered.

Alice frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown, and raised a hesitant hand to her chin as she looked from Rogue to Dorian. Rogue, who looked so genuine, and Dorian who looked so hopeful. So heartbreakingly hopeful.

"If it's alright with your professor," Alice allowed after a moment's deliberation. She was rewarded by the sight of her son's whole face lighting up at the prospect.

Rogue beamed as well, and started searching her person for a pen and a bit of paper to write down the Leeches phone number. Once she'd gotten that detail from them, Rogue gave Dorian a quick hug and then waved as she headed off down the street in the opposite direction to the mother and son. She still had food to deliver after all.


	8. Chapter 8

"Mrs Leech," Chuck said as he, Rogue and Alice Leech sat together in his office – Dorian was playing outside with Jamie. "You have a very special boy. I hope that some day he might join the other students here, at the Institute, as more than just a visitor."

Alice nodded slowly. "That sounds fine," she agreed. "You have a lovely place here, and I'd be able to visit without any trouble."

Charles smiled slightly. "Yes, thank you," he said. "But that's not really what I meant. This institution is for youngsters who are gifted but... not in the traditional sense of the word," he hedged.

"Take me f'r example," Rogue suggested, sick of the adults dancing around it. "Ah can do this," she said, and raised a hand, fingers spread, in the direction of the coffee table between them. The piece of furniture lifted off the ground, perfectly level, and then she set it back down again.

Alice's eyes went wide with shock.

"Ah can do other stuff as well, but what's important right now is that Ah can also see bits of likely futures," Rogue explained as she lay her hand back down in her lap.

The woman's focus abruptly snapped from the coffee table to Rogue, though her eyes were no less wide than they had been before.

"Mrs Leech," Charles took up again. "My Institute for Gifted Students is specifically for students who have gifts, like Rogue does. Here, the teachers help the students learn to control their gifts, with, I admit, varying degrees of success. We also give them a safe environment to experiment with their gifts."

Alice looked more than slightly nervous about that.

"Mrs Leech," Rogue said, interrupting the professor, a comforting smile on her face. "It's a school full of kids with super powers. Of course we sometimes want to act like super heroes to go with that."

Alice smiled, just a little. It was a good point after all. "What sort of things do you do?" she asked.

"Well, sometimes we go camping, sometimes we'll do 'rescue' practices with a whole lot of diff'rent situations -"

"Which is helpful just in general, as well as being 'super hero'," Alice cut in with a nod of understanding.

Rogue beamed back. "An' there's activities where the trick is to _not_ use yer powers, or ones where we have to reach a goal at the end of an obstacle course, all sorts of fun things," Rogue explained, picking up again. "O'course, Logan takes it all _very_ seriously," she added. "But he's had a lot of bad things happen to him because of his gifts."

Alice frowned. "Then... is it safe for Dorian to be here?" she asked.

"Very safe," Chuck assured her. "Logan's gift is to heal at an extremely accelerated rate, this caused him to be sought out by both the army, as a soldier that was hard to kill, and by scientists, who wanted a specimen they would be able to experiment on without having to worry about him dying. Since I've met him, Logan has made it something of a personal mission to shut down any science project that would do to others the sort of thing that was done to him. Just recently he, Rogue, and one of our newest students went to shut down just such an organisation."

"Why would two of the students be going out to do such a dangerous thing?" Mrs Leech asked, horrified by the very idea it seemed.

"Ah went because mah powers were particularly useful," Rogue answered. "Logan went because, well, he's the grown-up who knows how to shut down organisations like that. The other girl who went with us... had just recently escaped from these people's lab. She needed to see them shut down. Closure," she explained.

"Logan works tirelessly to shut down these organisations and help the students here," Chuck said, picking up the thread again. "But he can only shut them down as he finds out about them. It always hits him hard when he finds out about such organisations when they've already been running, and ruining lives, for years."

Alice nodded and relaxed back into her seat, calmed by the explanation she had been given. She breathed deeply, looked out the window to where her son was playing, and straightened her spine with the iron of resolution.

"He'll get a regular education while he's here as well?" she asked.

Charles smiled and nodded. "For all of our students, the Institute pays at least a portion of the school fees for our students to attend at Bayville High, or in Jamie's case Bayville Primary, as he won't be starting high school until next year. After that, the Institute will support the students into whichever college they wish to attend."

"You're very generous," Mrs Leech said slowly.

Chuck flashed a reassuring smile. "As the students get older, and as new, younger students come in, the older ones help teach the younger ones, share their experiences and look out for them. Another of the instructors here, Ororo Munroe, was a student here when she was younger. It is my hope that, even when I am gone, that the students who have passed through this institution will keep it going for the sake of those who have yet to come," he explained.

Mrs Leech nodded in acceptance. "Then I have no problem with Dorian attending here when the time comes," she said. "Expect me to visit often though," she warned.  
"I hope you do," Chuck answered with a smile on his face.

~oOo~

Logan had agreed to take a few of them out on dirt bikes and quads to ride trails that would be underwater in just a few weeks – a dam was being built, so the valley would soon be a reservoir. It was a shame really, the place was just so pretty.

Rogue and Kitty paired up on the two quads while all the boys who had come for the ride claimed the dirt bikes. Rogue had more experience with the machines, heck, with _any_ machine, than Kitty did. She had roughly a year and a half on the other girl in her _own_ life experience and several _decades_ more from people she'd absorbed. This meant that she would be riding _behind_ Kitty, keeping the younger girl in her sights in case something happened.

Something like choosing a turning in the track that led to a dead end and Kitty not applying the breaks on her own quite fast enough.

Rogue slammed on her own breaks and reached out with Jean's telekinetic powers to catch girl and quad out of the air as they fell, and bring them back up so that she could set them onto the track.

"Like, woah," Kitty said as she gasped for breath. "Thanks Rogue," she added, her eyes still wide from her fright and the adrenaline from the fall still pumping through her system.  
"Yer welcome," Rogue answered as she hopped off her own quad. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Kitty answered, rubbing at her arms nervously. "Just a bit shocky."

Rogue nodded. "Well, ya picked a nice view ta stop at while ya calm down again," she offered in a weak attempt at humour.

Kitty laughed anyway.

"Ah know," Rogue said, smiling. "Let's phase through the rock to the bottom of the canyon. The quad's'll be safe here f'r a while, an' when we get down there Ah'll float 'em down to us. Ya should be over yer shakes by then, yeah?" she suggested.

Kitty smiled a little wider than before. "Sounds great!" she agreed and was off the quad and headed for the edge of the cliff in a heart-beat.

Rogue chuckled. "Alright," she said. "Jus' don't go veerin' off."

Kitty giggled and held out a hand to Rogue. "Can't get separated this way," she suggested with a smile. "And hey, for once we're, like, _both_ wearing gloves."

This was true. They may have been wearing short sleeves in deference to the heat, but they were _also_ both wearing gloves that were reinforced to prevent broken fingers if there was an accident.

Rogue happily took Kitty's hand, and together they slid down the side of the cliff, slipping through outcroppings that would have made the ride bumpy, until they reached the bottom of the canyon and Rogue pulled them both up short. She checked there was enough space for both of the quads, and enough of a track for them to ride out on, and then floated the two machines down to join them.

Kitty frowned. "Like, why do you have an easier time with that telekinetic stuff than Jean does?" she asked curiously. Not disapproving, just confused.

"Ah think it's because Ah don't have Jean's issues with her powers," Rogue said slowly, cautiously. She was entitled to her secrets after all, even if they were about other people's powers.

"Oh, right," Kitty said, accepting that. "I remember her telling me, before you came to the Institute Rogue, how there were days she had to stay home from school because she could hear, like, _everybody's_ thoughts."

Rogue nodded and left it at that.

"That was really impressive," a voice said from their left.

Kitty and Rogue both turned sharply, and a Native American girl walked up to them, smiling.

"The way you slid through those rocks, and floated those down here! Only a mutant could do something like that! You _are_ mutants, aren't you?" she asked, clearly excited as she got right up in Rogue's face.

"Does it matter?" Kitty asked nervously from the side

"Absolutely!" the girl answered enthusiastically as she turned to Kitty, a huge smile on her face. "Because, if you're mutants, then you're just like me! Well," she said, leaning back out of their personal space again at last. "Your powers are way cooler, but -"

"Wait," Kitty said, holding up a hand to halt the talk for a moment. "You mean, _you're_ a mutant? I've never seen you around here before."

"I live over that way," the girl said. "In Darkhollow, with my grandfather."

Rogue took off her gloves and extended a hand. "Pleased ta meetcha, Ah'm Rogue," she said. "_Not a word, Kitty_," she warned telepathically.

"Likewise," the girl answered, shaking Rogue's hand. "I'm Danielle."

"Yer also not really here," Rogue said as she let go of the girl's hand.

Both Kitty and Danielle gaped at Rogue.

"But she's standing right there!" Kitty objected. "You just shook her hand! How could she, like, not be there?"

"Mah power," Rogue said as she pulled on her gloves once more, "is to be able to absorb memories, powers, energy from anyone Ah touch with mah skin. Now, Ah've got it just about completely under control, but when Ah don't even have ta fight mah mutation not to draw on _any_ of those, that tells me Ah'm either not dealin' with a real person, or Ah'm dealin' with a dead one."

"I'm trapped," Danielle admitted. "I was hiking, there was a rock-slide, and now the water is rising," she said in a quiet, slightly desperate voice.

"How far from here are you?" Kitty asked.

"And in what direction?" Rogue added.

"From here, almost straight down," Danielle answered.

"No wonder you're impressed by the ability to phase through rock," Rogue commented. "Alright Kitty, we're performin' a rescue!"

"Like, alright!" Kitty cheered, and the two of them dropped through the rock beneath their feet until they came out into an underground cavern, where they started looking around for the body of the girl they'd just met.

"There she is!" Kitty called, pointing to where a body, unconscious and glowing slightly, was half-pinned by a large rock.

"You head back up," Rogue instructed. "Phone f'r the prof to get the medical bay ready. Ah'll teleport her topside. She ain't gonna handle goin' through that much rock too well right now."

Kitty nodded and disappeared through the ceiling of the cave.

Rogue wrapped her arms around Danielle – yes, they were bare, and so were Danielle's arms, so she _was_ getting the girl's powers and memories at this time, which she figured would be useful for calling in her family once she was safe again. Rogue was _very_ careful though not to absorb any of Danielle's life energy. The other girl just wasn't strong enough to be able to deal with _that_ kind of drain right now.

Kitty was quick to take Danielle from Rogue, lay her on the ground and do a quick physical before she started gently shaking the girl to wake her up. Rogue, in the mean time, sought out the mind of Danielle's grandfather, Black Eagle, to let him know what had become of his granddaughter. Once she found him, he was very glad to hear the news – even if Danielle's uncontrolled powers had caused everybody else in Darkhollow to leave.

Rogue understood completely, having gotten the full story from Danielle's memories while she was unconscious. Native Americans spells as a protection against uncontrolled powers made Rogue remember the shamanistic rituals that Cain had used to awaken his powers. Perhaps at the root of it all, it was more magic than mutation.

Then again, maybe that was just fanciful thought.

"Rogue! She's awake!" Kitty called, jolting Rogue out of her thoughts. "I'm gonna call Logan now."

Rogue nodded and bent over where Danielle was lying. "Welcome back," Rogue greeted the other girl.

"Thank you," Danielle answered, her voice more raspy than the illusion of her that they'd met a few minutes previously. "I owe you my life."

Rogue shook her head. "Don't owe me a thing," she said uncomfortably. "Ah absorbed yer powers while Ah was gettin' ya out. Call it even. Ah let yer gran'pa know yer safe too, by the way."

"Thank you," Danielle said again, a smile on her face.

"Okay, Logan's on the way!" Kitty announced with a grin a few moments later. "And hey, you've, like, _got_ to come back to the Institute with us Danielle! It would be totally cool to have you there! It's a whole school of mutants!"

The way Danielle smiled in answer to that suggestion indicated that she'd probably agree to the idea as soon as she was back to being in perfect health again.

~oOo~

It was a bad day for Bayville when the giant robots attacked. Yeah, it sounds like a line out of a corny 80's science-fiction comic book, but all the same, it was. More to the point, it was a bad day for the _mutants_ of Bayville, since the giant robot in the middle of Bayville was attacking _them_ specifically. Not that anybody realised at first. The thing just marched down the main street and opened fire on Bayville's mall where Tabitha and Jean were leading the way on a no-boys-allowed girl's day out of shopping and dancing and feeling good about themselves.

"Y-yeah, that's, uh, that's two-hundred dollars for the whole lot," the cashier said as Rogue – the designated rear-guard of the group, as they didn't want to lose any of the girls on the shopping trip – paid for a new leather jacket, among other things.

Rogue passed him the cash, grabbed her shopping bag, and dashed out to where the other girls were waiting for her – all of them having gone through the checkout already.

"Like, what do we do?" Kitty asked, just as scared as everybody else who was running for their lives in the besieged building.

"I, I don't know," Jean answered.

"Kitty, you take everyone out through the walls, Jean, you drive 'em back to the mansion, warn the prof. Ah'll get as many other people out of here as Ah can," Rogue said, handing over her shopping before she called upon Mystique's powers to shift her form, and on Warren's mutation as well. "Ah can't believe Ah'm doin' this," she said, shaking her head at herself.

"Like, _so_ many people are gonna go to church this Sunday when they get saved by an angel," Tabitha commented. "Blonde and a foot taller is a good look for you Rogue."

"Yeah, yeah, jus' go!" Rogue ordered, and took off to get people down from where they'd become trapped on the upper floor. It only took a few minutes, sometimes using Kitty's power as well to get people out from underneath fallen debris, which really just garnered even more awed looks from the people she was saving. Then Rogue moved down to help pull people out of harms way on the lower floors.

Rogue found Dorian and his mother there, with Mrs Leech separated from her son by more fallen junk. Neither of them were hurt, but they couldn't reach each other, and Dorian looked ready to collapse from the pain of his headache.

"Stop!" the boy yelled, throwing back his head and screaming the word.

Rogue felt her powers all just disappear. Her own included. It was a good thing she was on the ground, or she would have fallen. Even better, the robot had stopped as well.

"Dorian," Rogue called, running towards him. "Dorian, sweetie, Ah know the giant robot is scary, but ya turned off the electric doors as well, an' people can't get out. Ya turned off mah powers too, so Ah can't get yer mama through all that to you. Now, can you figure out what to turn back on again? Can you do that?" she asked.

Dorian nodded slightly, and Rogue felt her powers kick back in – and all the others that she'd absorbed were still right there as well. The lights of the mall that still worked flickered back on, and even the lights of the robot lit up for a moment before they shut off again. Rogue gave Dorian a quick peck on the cheek – never new when a power like that might come in useful after all – and took his hand so she could lead him through the rubble to his mother.

"Mrs Leech," Rogue announced with a smile as she and Dorian emerged from the rubble to join the woman on the other side. "Ah am pleased to announce that yer boy is ready ta join super-hero school."

Alice released a short, hysterical laugh before wrapping her arms around her boy, and Dorian himself grinned widely.

"What's going on here!?" a male voice demanded loudly. "Why has this one stopped working?"

Rogue felt the blood drain out of her face. _This one_? There was more than _one_? Quickly, Rogue shifted forms into the one she had been in before while she was helping people get out of the mess that had been made of the mall by the robot – a foot taller, blonde, very large white feathery wings, and wearing a white robe. Yes, she was _really_ working the 'angel' angle. She flew upwards, and touched a man who looked like he was in charge, taking memories as she flew by. She wasn't hanging around here though. _This_ situation was taken care of, all thanks to little Dorian.

Rogue burst through the broken sky light and out into the sky above, then turned and flew as fast as she could to the _other_ giant robot... that was heading for the Institute, carelessly stepping on cars along the way. Unfortunately, it had an impressive head start on her, and started firing upon the Institute as it reached the gates.

Thunder-heads formed, and Rogue saw Storm over the mansion, her cape billowing behind her impressively. Still, the monster robot continued to fire at the mansion as it walked up the drive and was fired upon by the security systems. Rogue and Storm both called down lightning at the same time, and the two large bolts fried the circuits for just a moment, but the robot kept walking, kept firing.

Rogue growled. She may have somewhere else to go if she needed to, but that mansion was _home_, it had all the people she thought of as family there! _And_ her brand new leather jacket. She called upon Magneto's powers. The robot _was_ metal after all. The people who'd built it clearly hadn't ever had to plan around an enemy like Magneto. Under her direction, the monstrosity easily came apart and each piece was crushed down into a perfect sphere of metal which could later be melted down and used for something more _productive_ than mass destruction.

Rogue flew back to the Institute, letting her wings catch patches of sunlight as she went... until she reached a window that had been broken by the robot's blasts. The professor was there, dying as he bled out from where the blast had destroyed more than half his chest and completely removed one of his arms.

"Rogue?" he called weakly, wondering at the blonde angel that had a face a bit like one of his students.

"Ah'm here," she answered, letting the morph melt away as she went to him.

"I'm not going to last long," he said, reaching for her. "Rogue, will you... take the last of my life from me?" he asked. "All my memories... all my powers..."

Rogue peeled off a glove, took his hand in hers, and fought back tears as her mutation completely absorbed everything that Charles Xavier had to offer her. When that was done, Rogue called on Multiple's mutation, then Mystique's.

"Yer not dead yet Chuck," she told his corpse even as the _other_ her turned into the man who had just passed.

Logan arrived at the door just then. "Stripes?" he asked. "What's goin' on?"

"Don't tell the children he's dead, please Logan," said the fake Chuck. "I believe that mutants have just been or momentarily will be irrevocably exposed to the world. They don't need to deal with the death of the professor at the same time."

"Laura and Rahne will know," Logan pointed out. "You can't change yer scent any more than Mystique could, and those two will be able to smell the difference."

"Ah'll talk to 'em," Rogue answered, running a hand through her hair. "Man, this is gonna be hard."

"You're telling me," the fake Chuck quipped, amused.

Logan raised an eyebrow at the fake professor – who was still standing over the destroyed body of the _real_ Charles Xavier. "Alright," he allowed at last. "But first we gotta deal with the mess in here, and Chuck should get the burial he wanted, even if there won't be much of a funeral."

"According to his memories, he wanted to be cremated," the false one stated with surety. "Until we're ready to let the professor actually die, his remains can be kept in an urn out of harm's way."

Logan nodded in acceptance, but pointed out that they'd still need to get the body out of the room, the room cleaned up, and the bloodstains out of everything.


	9. Chapter 9

Mutants _were_ out in the open after the whole giant robot bit. They were called Sentinels, apparently, and had been created by a fanatical anti-mutant ex-Shield man called Trask. It was his bid to "ensure the survival of _his_ species", as though mutants weren't human any more, and an active threat on top of that. In the televised trial – he _had_ caused a heck of a lot of property damage after all, and gotten a _lot_ of people hurt (quite apart from killing the professor, who was thankfully the _only_ injury _at all_ in the Institute) – Trask explained how his Sentinel robots were programmed to target mutants only. He explained how he'd even captured a mutant and run tests to make sure his machines could not be stopped by "enemy fire", but _could_ still receive commands from headquarters remotely. The man yelled at the top of his lungs that the 'angel' that had been 'saving' people was actually a mutant, and no one would have been in any danger at all if 'it' hadn't been at the mall pretending to be a normal person.

The judge called a recess to the case, and Rogue received a subpoena to appear in court and give her accounting, as she had been accused of being the cause for all the harm the people suffered.

Rogue arrived at the court house barely an hour later, looking just like she had when she'd been flying around helping people off unstable balconies and out from under fallen debris.

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" the officer asked, swearing her in as she took the stand.

At that, Rogue let the image of the angel that she'd walked into that courtroom wearing fall away, leaving just little, normal her behind. "Ah do," she answered.

"Objection!" the lawyer for the defence – Trask – called out. "This person can _clearly_ shape-shift! How are we to know they really _are_ the one who was at the Bayville mall that day?"

"Ah made a purchase," Rogue offered when the judge looked at her enquiringly. "The receipt would have date an' time, an' Ah helped out a mother and son that Ah knew, Ah shifted back ta mahself so the little boy would know who was helpin' 'im."

"Objection overruled," the judge stated firmly. "The witness is willing to provide proof and witness that she _was_ the person in question, and it is my opinion that further questioning will only further prove the validity of this claim."

"Prosecution, she's your witness," the judge said, waving the other lawyer, the man representing the state, forward.

"Thank you, your honour," the man said, getting up from his seat. "Miss Rogue," he began. "What were you doing at the mall on the day in question?"

"Ah was shoppin' with friends," Rogue answered. "Girl's day out, no boys allowed, jus' havin' a bit of fun."

"You do this sort of thing regularly?" the lawyer asked. "Go out with your friends?"

Rogue shook her head. "Not really," she answered. "But one of the girls Ah lived with needed cheerin' up, so shoppin' in stores with diff'rent styles was the order of the day, as well as music stores an' dancin' on the escalators. Ah know more of the alternative fashion shops than the other girls, so they, uh, _needed mah expertise_ was how they put it. Ah normally do mah shoppin' on mah own time."

"You were in the mall before the Sentinel robot appeared?" the lawyer asked.

"Yeah," Rogue agreed. "At least an hour," she added. "Probably closer ta two."

"At any time on this shopping trip, had you used your mutant abilities?" the lawyer asked. "Prior to the appearance of the Sentinel robot, of course."

Rogue thought about it for a moment. "No," she decided. "Not even to try an' fit into a smaller size pair of pants, an' believe me, that's real temptin' some days."

The lawyer chuckled slightly in appreciation. "So, you were just being a normal teen-aged girl?"

"Yeah," Rogue answered. "Normal as any girl mah age."

"You had no desire to cause harm to the other people who were shopping that day?" the lawyer pressed.

"Of course not!" Rogue objected.

"And you had no idea that the Sentinel robot, which we now know targets mutants, would be attacking that day?" the lawyer asked.

Rogue shook her head. "Ah had a feelin' that somethin' might happen," she admitted. "But Ah di'n't think it'd be that big a somethin'." She _had_ looked with Irene's powers, just briefly – it wasn't sensible to live always in the future and never in the present after all, besides, she didn't like to spoil the surprise. All she'd seen was the awakening of Dorian's powers while the kid was at the mall. The rest, she hadn't known about.

"Did any of the people who you were out with know that you are a mutant?" the lawyer asked.

Rogue nodded. "We all live together up at the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters," she answered. "Hard ta hide stuff like that from people ya share a bathroom with."

"Did they know about the Sentinel robot ahead of time?" the lawyer continued.

"They were all as shocked an' terrified as everyone else," Rogue answered. "No," she clarified for him. "They didn't."

"Thank you Miss Rogue," the lawyer for the prosecution said, a smile on his face. "Prosecution rests, your honour."

"Lawyer for the defence, you may approach the witness," the judge said.

"Miss Rogue, you _are_ a mutant, aren't you?" the lawyer asked.

"Ah am a _person_ with abilities that more educated people than me have figured out arises from a slight deviation from the norm in mah DNA," Rogue said pointedly. "Ah am as much a _mutant_ as a person born blind, or with an extra toe on their left foot."

"It was a yes or no question, Miss Rogue," the lawyer stated.

"What a mutant is, or is not, is not up for debate in this courtroom at this time," the judge stated firmly. "This court will accept the definition given by Miss Rogue to mean what may be simply labelled 'mutant'."

The lawyer nodded, grudgingly, in acceptance of the judge's ruling.

"The girls you were shopping with, were they also mutants?" the lawyer asked.

"Objection," the prosecution called. "Surely this has no relevance to the case?"

"Your honour, I _am_ leading up to something," the defence begged.

The judge looked between the two lawyers and finally to Rogue. "Can you answer that question?" he asked her.

"Well, all mah house-mates, which includes all the girls Ah went shoppin' with that day, are right there, yer honour," Rogue said, pointing to where the students of the Institute were seated, Logan at the end of one row of seats, and Ororo and the fake Charles Xavier book-ending another. "An' if they are or not, Ah think it's up ta them ta say."

The judge nodded. "Move on," he instructed the defence lawyer.

The man sighed, but shuffled his papers and picked up at a different line of questioning. "Why did you disguise yourself, as we saw when you entered this courtroom, to rescue people?" he asked.

"Because an angel isn't gonna have ta deal with people puttin' up a fight," Rogue answered. "Ah could help people quicker if they weren't tellin' me ta get outta the way f'r mah own safety, or screamin' an' panickin' because they're scared. Seein' an angel comin' to yer rescue kinda surprises people into lettin' you help 'em."

"So you _didn't_ disguise yourself to maintain anonymity in the unsuspecting population?" the lawyer prodded.

Rogue shook her head. "Wasn't what Ah was thinkin' at the time," she admitted.

"Witness accounts have you leaving the stopped Sentinel robot and flying towards the Xavier Institute, where you live, and then encountering a second Sentinel robot. You attacked this robot. Why did you not attack the first?" the lawyer asked.

"Ah was a bit more concerned about the immediate safety of the people," Rogue answered. "The robot had already caused damage, people were already hurt an' needed help. Ah had no idea what that thing was up to, or what it could do. Mah focus was to get everybody Ah could away from it."

"Then why did your approach change for the second Sentinel?" the lawyer pressed.

"It was shootin' at mah home," Rogue said. "The only damage it was causin' where it was standin' was ta parked cars. Ah also had room and time enough to see jus' what Ah was dealin' with, without people runnin' around panicked, like Ah wanted to."

"You _wanted_ to panic," the lawyer repeated. "Could you please explain to the court what you mean by that?"

"It was a giant robot that was shootin' stuff up," Rogue said flatly. "Ah wanted ta get as far away from it as Ah could, screamin' the whole way f'r pref'rence. But Ah managed ta get mah friends out, an' then Ah spotted someone else in trouble who Ah could help, an' it jus' kept on like that."

The questions just kept on like that for a while too. When the defence was finished, the prosecution had come up with a few more questions for her as well, and finally Rogue was allowed out of the witness box – only for the fake Charles Xavier to be called to the stand.

The mutants were cleared of all fault in the Sentinel mess – as if there would be any doubt – but they were also outed to the public, completely and totally. Even Kurt, with his image inducer, wouldn't be able to hide. Their press was good for now however, even if there _were_ people who sympathised more with Trask's view.

People like Principle Kelly, who didn't want to let dangerous mutants into the school – even if they'd been there all along. The man was proposing to ban mutants from attending, thankfully, it didn't go through. Jean gave a _very_ moving speech at the meeting. Unfortunately, Principle Kelly decided to take his views into the political field. The new principle of Bayville High School, however, was _much_ more understanding. After all, her son's mutant abilities had manifested during the Sentinel attack on the Bayville mall.

~oOo~

Rogue had re-wired the phone lines, just a little bit, so that any calls made to the Professor would go to her. After all, she _was_ the one impersonating him – a secret that both Ororo and Hank had been let in on. The kids... only Laura and Rahne knew at the moment, as they could smell the difference. The others were judged not quite ready to deal with it. Not while there was still so much other stuff going on – and getting used to everyone in the school knowing that they were mutants was a bit of an issue for some of them.

So when a phone call came in the middle of the night, Rogue took a moment to assess which phone had rung before answering – in Chuck's voice.

Being asked for help by someone calling Charles Xavier 'father' was a surprise. Chuck hadn't known he _had_ a son after all. As soon as that call was resolved, she called Chuck's ex-wife and had Logan prep the X-Jet. She, Logan, and a multiple of herself would be going to Scotland. Of course, one of her would be disguised as Chuck for getting onto the jet.

Not for getting off it though. Rogue wasn't going to lie to Chuck's ex-wife, even if he would have.

"Gabrielle Palmer?" Rogue asked when the door of the, admittedly very impressive home, was opened.

"Yes," the woman answered. "And you are?"

"Ah'm Rogue, Ah called earlier, after David called... his father," Rogue answered. She'd explained the whole situation – as far as she knew it – to this woman when she'd called. "This is Logan, a friend a mine who worked with your late ex-husband."

"Oh, yes," Gabrielle said, standing aside. "Do, do come in. Thank you for coming so quickly."

"Ma'am," Rogue said once the door was closed behind them. "If it's alright with you, Ah'd like to use mah power to get a look at what's goin' on."

"What _is_ your power?" Gabrielle asked.

"Ah can copy people's memories jus' by touchin' em," Rogue answered, leaving out the _other_ details of her powers, as she would only be using that aspect. "It's not like Chuck's telepathy, Ah won't be lookin' in yer thoughts."

Gabrielle nodded her permission, and Rogue took off a glove.

"Right," Rogue said as she stepped away from the older woman. "Gimme a moment to assimilate that," she asked.

"Stripes?" Logan asked as he wrapped his hands around Rogue's shoulders, holding her steady.

"Ah'll be alright," she promised. "Let's... let's check David's room, an' Ah want ta meet this Ian kid," she added, directing the last comment to Gabrielle.

"If I can find him," she agreed. "It's a big place, and he's a small boy."

Rogue nodded in allowance, and she and Logan followed Gabrielle to David's room. She left them there to look for Ian.

"What's this about a third person in the house?" Logan asked once it was just the two of them. "I only smelled two people coming in, and one of 'em was her."

Rogue looked up at Logan from where she was considering the missing David's laundry basket by the window. "Thanks," she said. "Nice ta know mah nose wasn't missin' anythin'," she added as she left the window – and the confirmation of David's scent. "Ah don't really know what ta make of it mahself," she admitted. "One thing f'r sure though," she continued. "McFadden Castle was oddly prominent in Ms Palmer's mind, an' Ah don't think she even noticed."

"McFadden Castle?" Logan asked.

Rogue nodded. "Now, why would a woman who just moved here know that the place has been a teen hang-out f'r years, 'specially when her own son ain't got any friends who'd tell _him_ that?" she asked rhetorically.

"Ya got a point," Logan agreed, just a little darkly.

Rogue nodded, and noticed a bit of blonde hair at the door.

"Are you Ian?" she asked, walking towards the door.

"_He smells like David though_," Logan thought to her.

"_Ah know_," Rogue answered silently. "_Which might just explain more 'n it doesn't_."

Logan shrugged and looked away, leaving it in her hands. He knew perfectly well that Rogue was more capable than she let on. He knew why too, having been one of exactly three witnesses to the girl's breakdown shortly after she arrived at the mansion. Storm and Kurt had been the other two. Rogue had cried and begged to know _why_ people would adopt her, raise her, _act_ like they cared about _her_ when all they wanted was for her to be _loyal_ to them so that they would have her _potential for limitless power_ at their disposal. She'd been working on building up that potential ever since. If she wasn't weak, she couldn't be manipulated and taken advantage of was her reasoning.

So he let her chase after the little kid who smelled like the teenager they were looking for, aware that her gloves _were_ off, and walked slowly as he headed through the halls looking for Gabrielle. He was going to need directions to McFadden Castle. Once he had those, he'd get his motorbike out of the X-Jet and go check the place out.

~oOo~

When the absorption of thoughts, memories, powers and energies was uncontrolled, it was painful for Rogue as well as the person she was absorbing. Thankfully, these days she had it almost perfectly controlled. Except, it seemed, when she wasn't conscious. Still, the pain woke her, which was a good thing, and rendered her captor immobile for at least a little while, which was even better. Particularly as she gained his powers into the package deal.

"Great, another person with a complex about Chuck," Rogue groaned as she sat up and looked over to the currently comatose body of Lucas/Ian/David. Now _that_ was a messed up manifestation of mutant powers.

Split personalities that manifested _physically_, with only minor control from any of the three minds in his head, _all_ mutant powers blocked from the original personality, _most_ blocked from Ian, and with Lucas in full control of all of them – but not _always_ of the body. _Normal_ people would go to a psychologist for this kind of thing.

The male figure who had passed out from the drain of Rogue's powers groaned as he regained consciousness. He _had_ brought them as far as McFadden Castle before making the mistake of touching her skin, so Rogue had to give him credit for that much she supposed. Rogue pulled her gloves out of her pocket and onto her hands as the guy rolled over and started picking himself up.

"What was _that_?" he asked as he brought a hand to his head.

"Yer the _psychic_," Rogue quipped archly. "Shouldn't you know?"

Lucas – because he _was_ Lucas right now – glared up at Rogue where she was sitting, comfortably, a little above him. "For some reason, no, I don't," he said with a growl. "And I don't like that," he added slightly dangerously as he finally got to his feet.

Rogue smirked. "So, jus' like yer pappy, ya don't know everythin'," she said.

Lucas' eyes flashed dangerously, which only caused Rogue's smirk to get wider.

"That's right," she said. "Chuck _didn't know about you_. Psychic dun't mean all-knowin'."

"So how do _you_ know about me?" Lucas asked, stalking towards her.

"You told me," Rogue answered simply, not at all intimidated by the guy with the wild blonde hair, the little blonde goatee, and a full foot on her at least. "David."

Lucas clutched at his head and his body shrunk into that of a slightly younger teen who's once-fine clothes looked somewhat abused.

"H-how did you do that?" the teen asked. "How did you know?"

"Like Ah said," Rogue answered. "You told me."

"Bu- but I didn't!" David objected, wide-eyed and confused.

"Ah was suspicious when 'Ian' smelled the same as you, an' Ah got a _good_ fix on yer scent in yer room. An' then _he_ smelled jus' the same too. So, Ah should introduce mahself properly. Ah'm Rogue. Ah... work with yer father, Ah guess you could say."

"He's here?" David asked. "You men he actually came?"

"Chuck may never have known he _had_ a son," Rogue said, jabbing a finger into David's chest. "But you called." Okay, so she wasn't being completely upfront, but this kid wasn't exactly stable. Heck, Lucas had been aiming to use Chuck's powers to eliminate Ian and David, giving _him_ permanent control of the body.

"According to Lucas, he's one of the greatest telepaths in the world," David objected. "How could he _not_ know?"

"You communicate with the other personalities in yer head," Rogue commented, ignoring the question for a moment. "That's good. As f'r the prof not knowin', well, there was yer ma not tellin' 'im f'r one, an' when a man has no idea that he _might_ have a son, he don't think ta look. There's a lot a people in the world ta find jus' one without even knowin' ta look."

"Figures you'd defend him," David grumbled.

"Ah didn't much like yer father," Rogue snapped. "But Ah have _no_ problem pointin' out where yer thinkin' has holes in it. Now, Ah suggest you get a handle on yer head-space, cause yer ma's worried abou'cha."

"I notice you didn't say my _father_ was," David said, slightly caustically, before he gripped his head and shifted into Lucas again. "Is he too busy worryin' about other people's freaks to think about his own?" he demanded.

"He's dead," Rogue answered shortly. Screw delicacy, this guy needed a hammer taken to his head.

Lucas' eyes went wide in surprise, and his form became Ian's.

"He's been dead f'r a month. Ah've been impersonatin' him around the Institute he built so the kids there wouldn't all fall apart. Ah'm the one who answered the phone when ya called. He died never knowin' he had a son."

Ian made a sweep of his hand, and fire sprang up in a circle around them.

Rogue put it out without even thinking about it. She knew more about fire than this boy. She had seen the heart of a volcano, and bathed in the earth's pulse, she did not fear the flame.

Ian became Lucas again, and attacked her with a psychic blast. Just like Rogue knew his father had once stopped Cain. Seemed it ran in the family.

Rogue had drained the powers of insane telepaths before. Her powers were greater than his, and her mind was whole while his was fractured. She didn't move from where she stood, didn't flinch, simply let the pain – nothing compared to the experiments that Logan and Laura had suffered through, or what Magneto and Creed had lived through, or even a patch on the psychic blasts that Chuck had hit Cain with so many years ago – wash over her. Rogue closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

It took a moment, gathering the psychic powers of Chuck, Jean, Mesmiro, the very recently acquired Lucas/Ian/David collective and Danielle. The last one might not have been needed, but _tricking_ the mind into believing that a personality had been destroyed would work just as well as actually doing it. Then, with all these gathered together, Rogue sent them at Lucas. It was not gentle. It was not caring or cautious or kind. It was a vicious attack on the psyche. Rogue ripped it apart, dissected it like a surgeon. She dismantled and destroyed the personality that was Lucas. If there was one thing she knew how to do, it was eject an unwanted personality. Of course, it had always been within her _own_ head before.

Only when she was satisfied that 'Lucas' had been removed, and even given David a vision of Lucas screaming as he was obliterated, did Rogue open her eyes and look at the body of David.

"So," she said to his broken, quivering form as he lay curled up in on himself. "Do you want to keep Ian?" she asked. "Or do you want the separate personality removed and have him properly integrated into your psyche again?"

David _became_ Ian again, and the boy threw fire at Rogue, anger all over his face.

She assumed Magma's form, and welcomed the fire. Then she sent it back again, and watched dispassionately as it consumed Ian. The mute little boy who was angry at his father for never being there, just like Lucas had been the angry, rebellious teen crying out for his father's attention. Ian vanished, and David was left behind. David who had _created_ these two other personalities. David who longed for, and despised, his absent father. His _dead_ father who he would now never meet.

"Next time," Rogue said as she stood over the limp form of David. "Seek therapy."

"Rogue?" a familiar voice called.

"Logan!" Rogue greeted as she turned to the source of the voice, a smile on her face. "Hey, you missed the action."

Logan smiled back as she ran to him, colliding with his chest happily as she wrapped her arms around his bike jacket.

"Well, I knew you'd be fine. I'm just your ride for this outing," he answered. "Where's the kid?"

Rogue let go of Logan so she could point to where David was still lying, not responding to the world around him. "Brat needs therapy," she stated.

Logan nodded and walked over to pick the kid up.

"Can't let you do that, mate," one teenager said, standing up between Logan and David. "Lucas has plans," he added, as more teens appeared around corners and over walls, and stood between Logan and David.

"I miss somethin' here?" Logan asked as he looked between the teens and Rogue.

"Yeah," Rogue answered. "But so did all these guys," she added. "Lucas was a physically manifested portion of David's own psyche. He doesn't exist any more though."

Shock rippled through the crowd, and Logan took the opportunity to push past the kids and grab the target before heading back to Rogue and leading her to where he'd parked his motorbike. They got David back to his mother and Rogue advised she get him to a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or a shrink. She honestly didn't care which, but David was gonna need _help_ to deal with the forceful removal of two separate personalities from his head, especially when he'd created them himself.

Then it was time for Rogue and Logan to head back to the Institute, which meant Rogue was going to need to create a Multiple to pose as Chuck again.

~oOo~

It was just about summer vacation. Some of the Institute kids would be going home to their families for a while, before returning and joining the others camping with Mr McCoy and Storm. Before any of that happened, however, there was an announcement to be made... and a proper funeral to be held.

"Why didn't you tell us straight away?!" Scott demanded, angry at having been lied to about the death of the professor for, literally, months.

"With the whole Sentinel mess hanging over us? With people on both sides of the line trying to figure out where they stood? With _everyone_ here needin' some reassurance?" Rogue countered, not returning anger for anger, but firm in her belief that she'd done the right thing.

"Including _you_," Kurt pointed out gently, his concern for his 'big sister' evident in his tone. "Why did you have to be the one to take on all of that responsibility? You couldn't tell _any_ of us?" he asked, the regret over not having been there to help her through that challenge shining in his golden eyes.

"Uh," Laura spoke up. "We knew," she supplied once everyone was looking at where she was sitting with Rahne.

"We could both smell the difference," Rahne explained.

"Logan, Mr McCoy and I knew as well," Ororo stated. "Rogue didn't want to leave a false Charles around the mansion while she, and all of you, were at school. We have all been working to resolve the Professor's personal matters, executing his will and so on."

"His will..." Scott said, falling back into his chair, the wind taken out of him with those two little words.

"Will the Institute be staying open?" Jean asked, a concerned and comforting hand over Scott's arm.

"It will," Storm answered. "Mr McCoy will be in charge, as Logan and I both have personal matters that take us away with some regularity, though of course we will still be here, as we have been before."

"And Warren will be down from New York to help out when he can too," Rogue added, which garnered some excited whispering. They'd all heard of the angel man after all. It would be quite something to see him in person, even after Rogue's transformation during the Sentinel incident.

"Nothin's really gonna change," Logan said in a sort of gentle gruffness. "Not too much anyway. We just... won't have the prof around any more."

For a lot of the students, Jean and Scott especially, the summer was spent learning to accept that fact. Learning to deal with it, and moving on with their lives. Making resolutions to live in a way that would have made the man, who had been caretaker and role-model to them, _proud_. This had the unfortunate side-effect of making Scott even more stiff and boy-scout than he had been before, but Jean balanced him – and reigned him in when needed, for which everyone was thankful.

~The End~


End file.
